Peter Bone: Onwhat basis the timetable was set for the introduction of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006.

Peter Bone: Is it not a fact that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments drew the attention of this House to the fact that the regulations are defective in no less than five areas? The Secretary of State bulldozed these new laws—which promote gay rights over religious freedom—through Parliament, not in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland, but because of his own political ambition to become the next Deputy Prime Minister.

Evan Harris: Does the Minister accept that while the regulations and the process were not perfect, there is, as he has said, strong support for the regulations from Opposition Members? The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) might note that only one Conservative turned up to vote against the regulations in the Standing Committee, which suggests that the Conservative party's objections are not very deep. There was only one vote against from the Conservatives.

Peter Hain: Of course there needs to be delivery. It is important that people appreciate the fact, which the hon. Gentleman has welcomed, that the leadership of Sinn Fein has said that it is the responsibility of people to co-operate with the police in dealing with crimes such as burglary, rape and the harassment of old people. It has said that republicans should join the police, and it has said that evidence, where it exists, and information should be brought forward on the McCartney murder case. Those are all positive signs that delivery is taking place. The IMC report is definitive—as it has been in the six reports since the IRA issued its statement that it was giving up its armed campaign on 28 July—that the IRA poses no terrorist threat, that it is driving criminality out of the organisation and that it is delivering on what people have demanded—no terrorism, no criminality and support for the police and the rule of law. The House should welcome that.

Peter Robinson: I am encouraged by the Under-Secretary's response on the physical infrastructure, but when her hon. Friend the Minister outlined the Department's strategy, he laid emphasis on the fact that there aretwo aspects to this—the physical infrastructure and the human infrastructure. He defined the requirementsin terms of getting greater participation in sport,improving sporting performance on the international stage, encouraging greater involvement in schools and opportunities for young people, and, importantly, improving the skills available to coaches, sports scientists and others involved in the human infrastructure. What measurements does the Under-Secretary have to ensure that progress is made in those areas so that there is a real legacy from the games?

Maria Eagle: The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that there is no point in having facilities without young people exploiting their talent in order to achieve sporting success, and that the human infrastructure is just as important as buildings and facilities. The sports strategy for Northern Ireland that is to be published shortly—not during the election purdah period, but immediately thereafter—will set out our proposals for many of these issues, with moneys being bid for under the comprehensive spending review. The strategy sets out a full range of arrangements in respect of elite athletes, for volunteering and for coaching. The hon. Gentleman may have noticed that many schoolchildren from Northern Ireland have already participated in the first of the schools games, which will take place on an annually leading up to 2012. He will have to wait a little longer to see the details, but I can assure him that there is a fully worked out programme that should enable us to develop the human infrastructure that we need, as well as to build the facilities required.

Paul Goggins: There will be absolutely no let-up in the fight against organised crime. I am grateful tothe hon. Gentleman for raising the issue, on which the media have speculated, of the merger between the Assets Recovery Agency and Serious Organised Crime Agency somehow being a concession to Sinn Fein. It was certainly not such a concession: the proposal emerged from a proper review in the Home Office of non-departmental public bodies. The merger makes complete sense and will strengthen the fight against crime. The message that it sends out, as I have said previously, is that all those involved in crime will be held to account.

Peter Hain: As the hon. Gentleman rightly pointsout, breakaway groups of dissident republicans are expressly trying to sabotage the democratic peace process on which we are embarking for an election on7 March and devolution on 26 March. That is their objective, and we must not allow that to happen. I can confirm, however, that Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, has said that in respect of crimes such as rape, car theft and violence against all people,
	"we will be actively encouraging people to work with the police, co-operate with the police to get the culprits, to get the perpetrators off our streets and dealt with properly."
	As I said earlier, he has also said that there should be full co-operation with the police on a range of other matters. The ard fheis motion passed by the Sinn Fein special conference was explicit in authorising support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the criminal justice system. As the hon. Gentleman has been concerned about such matters for many years, he will welcome all of that.

Alasdair McDonnell: What consideration has the Secretary of State given to a plan B in Northern Ireland? He will be aware that Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist party cannot trust each other and cannot be trusted to share power. They may agree to some sort of ugly carve-up by26 March, but the circumstances do not bode well for the future of sustainable, devolved government. Does he think that a reliable plan B is now necessary inview of the unlikelihood of establishing devolved government by 26 March?

Lembit �pik: On what the Secretary of State described as plan A, the DUP seta condition explicitly relating to full Sinn Fein involvement in Northern Ireland policing. Now that Sinn Fein has committed to exactly that, surely the conditions are being met, and the onus is on the DUP to play its part in restoring the Assembly. Does the Secretary of State see any justification for any party not now doing so?

Peter Hain: I understand the DUP's position, and when the manifesto is published I shall be interested to see what it says. However, it seems to me that theSt Andrews agreement, to which the DUP subscribed along with the other parties, is very clear. It refers to support for power-sharing and support for policing and the rule of law. Provided that, as I expectand as indeed has already happenedSinn Fein signs up to support for policing and the rule of law, there is no reason for Unionists in the DUP or any other party not to join it in governing in the future. If that opportunity were missed, it would mean a tremendous price for the hon. Gentleman's party and all the other parties, because dissolution would face Northern Ireland politics with a very bleak future for a very long time.

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman will have read, as I have, a statement by the president of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, in which he said
	Anybody who has any information on the McCartney killing should give it to the police.
	He could not have been clearer or more explicit. With all due respect, I think that, in the circumstances, the hon. Gentleman should welcome that, should welcome the other progress made last week, should welcome the ard fheis motion, and should join the Government in saying that now is the timewith continued delivery on support for policing and the rule of lawfor everyone to join in a power-sharing Executive and a new era for devolved democracy in Northern Ireland.

Andrew Dismore: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday7 February.

Tony Blair: I am grateful for the all-party parliamentary group's report on anti-Semitism and for the data compiled by the Community Security Trust, which show that there have been about 600 anti-Semitic race hate incidents. We are determined to do everything we can to stamp out this form of race hate, not only in respect of Jewish people but in respect of any members of our community. The announcement today bymy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government of a 5 million package, which will help us to combat extremism in local communities, will do something to help in that regard, but I think that a strong signal from the entire House of our abhorrence of any anti-Semitism or race hate crimes will be very welcome indeed.

David Clelland: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, unlike humans, who can remain fit for purpose for many decades, mechanical devices do not? Will he ensure the speedy passage through the House and the sympathetic support of the Government for the refurbishment and modernisation of the 26-year-old Tyne and Wear metro system, the business case for which was submittedlast week, so that we on Tyneside may continue to pursue Government policies for reducing congestion, stimulating local economies, fighting climate change and improving social mobility?

Tony Blair: I can assure my hon. Friendthat we will look closely at the proposals for the refurbishment of the metro, which would ensure that it continues to do its excellent work for the people of Newcastle and Gateshead. Fortunately, the proposals come in the context of the fact that we have been able to double investment in transport in the past 10 years, and further investments will come on line over the next few years. I cannot give him a definitive answer as yet, but we will look at the matter very closely.

Martin Horwood: In 2005, skilled IT professional Gary Douglas signed a Home Office pledge to make Britain his permanent home. The Home Office form said:
	This is essential and must be maintained.
	Will the Prime Minister look into Mr. Douglas's case, and explain why, having sold his home and businessin New Zealand, he now faces deportation under retrospective changes to the highly skilled migrant worker programme, along with valued professionals from India and elsewhere? When will the Government start deporting the right people, and stop deporting the wrong ones?

Paul Holmes: The Government tell Chesterfield borough council housing department that as it has a surplus of money from council tenants' rent they are taking away more than3 million a year to spend elsewhere. That surplus will rise to 5 million as the Government insist that council rents go up by more than inflation. At exactly the same time, the Government tell the housing department that it has too little money so it must privatise its council houses. Can the Prime Minister explain in which weird parallel universe it is possible to have too much money and too little money at exactly the same time?

John Randall: The Prime Minister said at the time of the last general election that he would serve a full term. Who or what made him chance his mind?

Tony Blair: I am happy to support that campaign. As my hon. Friend knows, we have made a substantial investment in tackling domestic violence over the past few years. It is interesting to point out, since we often hear bad news about aspects of the Home Office, that convictions at court have gone up from 8 per cent. to 32 per cent. since the programme was put in place; and the number of victims reporting ongoing violence has gone down from more than30 per cent. to 10 per cent. We now have 25 specialist domestic violence courts and we are going to expand the number to more than 60 by April this year. In this particular area, the problem was too long treated as though it were peripheral to the concerns of the Home Office and law and order; it is now right at the centre of our concerns.

Jack Straw: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on reform of the House of Lords. Accompanying this statement is a detailed White Paper, which is available in the Vote Office. The White Paper has been informed by the excellent report of the Joint Committee on Conventions, which the other place and this House debated and approved on 16 and 17 January respectively.
	The White Paper's publication follows nine months of intensive discussion within Government and with the other parties. I have chaired cross-party talksthe first such Government-led talks to be held, I am told, for nearly 40 years. The cross-party group has met eight times since June. I am very grateful to those on the group for their work and constructive approach to this complex issue.
	The starting point for the cross-party talks wasthat each of the three main parties was committed by its 2005 manifesto to seeking reform of the Lords. My party, as well as pledging, without qualification, to remove the remaining hereditary peers, said that a
	reformed upper chamber must be effective, legitimate and more representative without challenging the primacy of the House of Commons.
	The Conservatives promised
	to seek a cross-party consensus for a substantially elected House of Lords
	and the Liberal Democrats to replace the Lords with a predominantly elected second chamber.
	In the cross-party talks, a significant degree of consensus has been found on several, but not all, the important issues. Where the Government have not agreed with the Opposition or the Liberal Democrats, they have done their best in the White Paper accurately to reflect the areas of disagreement.
	All members of the group were of one mind on the fundamental primacy of the Commons and on the fact that the House of Lords should be a complement to this place, not a rival to it. There was agreement that a reformed House should be partly appointed, partly electeda hybridconsisting of at least 20 per cent. of non party-political members, and that it was essential that no political party should have a majority of the whole House of Lords. It was agreed that membership of the reformed House should reflect the diversity of the United Kingdom and its people and the range of religious opinion in the country. It was also agreed that the special arrangements for membership of the upper House of a limited number of hereditary peers should come to an end.
	The group decided that introducing reform over a long transitional period would be essential. But with opinion divided in all three parties, and each party committed to a free vote, we did not come to a view on the proportion of elected and appointed members, or on the precise method and timing of any elections, although all parties agreed that any elected element should be by a form of direct election.
	It is palpable that Lords reform has been unfinished business for at least 100 years. This is not a criticism of the work of the Members of the other place, many of whom give the nation great service and the benefitof their expertise and experience. But it is our judgmentshared by the other parties, as their manifestos showthat the status quo is no longer an option. However, we all accept that moving forward is difficult. Great passion is aroused on this issue in both Houses and all parties.
	Given this, the White Paper is self-evidently and unapologetically a compromise, both in terms of destination and of transition. I believe that the choice that we have is either to make progress on a scale and to a time scale of the kind indicated in the White Paper, or to see the whole exercise aborted altogether, in which case there would be no further progress on this matter for a generation.
	Time and again, fundamental reform of the House of Lords has failed because, for some, the best has become the enemy of the good. Deadlock this time round would be easy to achieve. The prize of progress means moving forward gradually and by consensus. The basis for consensus on a hybrid House already exists. All recent inquiries into the future of the Lordsincluding the royal commission, chaired by the noble Lord Wakeham, the Public Administration Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), and the cross-party Breaking the Deadlock grouphave come to this conclusion.
	The Government have used the White Paper to illustrate how a hybrid House might work, using a model in which 50 per cent. of the House is elected, and 50 per cent. is appointed: 30 per cent. from the political parties and 20 per cent. from those with no party political affiliation. In my view, this model would provide the most effective balance between election and appointment in a reformed House. However, there are myriad other views, and the free voteincluding by Ministerswill enable those views properly to be expressed.
	The White Paper proposes that the size of the House should be reduced to 540 Members. Elections would be held at the same time as elections to the European Parliament, and would use the same constituencies, but a different electoral system: that of the partially open list. One third would be elected at each election. The Church of England Bishops would continue to be represented.
	Should Parliament opt for a system in which appointments to the second Chamber continue,all appointments would be made by a new statutory appointments commission, assessing both suitability and propriety. The commission would be independent and report directly to Parliament. The right of the Prime Minister of the day to make appointments would end.
	The proposals in the White Paper would also break the link between the peerage and seats in Parliament. Members, including current Members of the House of Lords, would be able to resign their seats. Disqualification provisions for any Member of the Lords convicted of an offence would be brought into line with those in the Commons. All Members would be able to vote in general elections. The position of peers currently sitting in the House has been an important consideration, and we propose that no existing life peer should be forced to leave.
	Let me now turn to the procedure that the Government propose for the free vote in this House. The whole House will recall that when the free votes took place four years ago, there were eight options before it: five of themranging from abolition through 100 per cent. appointed to 100 per cent. electedwere put to Divisions. Every single option was voted down.
	Our system of voting in this House is well tried, and works to give a clear-cut decision on any straight yes/no choice. It is plainly essential that we use this system when it comes to determining the content of law. But the system is no goodit does not workfor indicating preferences. In mathematical terms, a binary system is not designed to elicit preferences and cannot do this job properly. Instead, the Government propose a system specifically designed to enable those voting in this House to come to a decision on the issue. Members will be invited to rank preferences in numerical order [Interruption.]

Theresa May: May I begin by thanking the Leader of the House for giving me significant advance sight of his statement? Opposition Members approached discussions in the cross-party working group constructively, looking for consensus. We have always made it clear that we would support reforms that create an upper Chamber that is capable of challenging and revising legislation, that is democratic and accountable, and that is expert and independent. I note that in his list of reasons for reform, the Leader of the House did not mention democracy and independence.
	The upper House has been a thorn in the Government's side, in protecting ancient liberties such as the right to trial by jury. It is crucial that any change leaves it even more capable of acting as a check on the power of the Executive. Opposition Members want reform that strengthens Parliament, but the proposal does not do that. It puts political parties even more in control of the upper House, which risks losing the independence that has seen it defeat this Government 415 times. The right hon. Gentleman entered cross-party discussions looking for consensus. He has not achieved that, but will he confirm that, not for thefirst time, there is not even consensus in the Cabinet, and does he not agree that that loss of collective responsibility is a reflection of the Prime Minister's lost authority?
	The proposal is for a hybrid House, but when the House last voted on Lords reform, the Prime Minister said:
	a hybrid between the two is wrong and will not work. [ Official Report, 29 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 877.]
	What has made the Prime Minister change his mind, and what makes the Leader of the House think it will work this time?
	The Government propose that the political parties nominate 30 per cent. of the upper House, and that50 per cent. be elected using a list system. Does the right hon. Gentleman really believe that a list system would encourage expert and independent candidates? With 80 per cent. of the House effectively appointed by the political parties, will the reforms not leave the House of Lords less independent and more under the control of political parties than it is today? Does not party patronage simply mean party control?
	The Leader of the House said that the reforms would need a long transitional periodlong, indeed. On these proposals, reform will not be complete until 2050quite an admission, given that the last White Paper was called Completing the Reform.
	Talking of long transitions, since 1997, on21 separate Divisions on Lords reform, the Chancellor has never voted. Will the Leader of the House reassure us that the Chancellor's coronation will not be yet another block to reforming the other place?
	It is not just the reforms themselves that raise important constitutional questions, but the process of voting on them. The right hon. Gentleman recommends preferential voting. Why has he not referred this unprecedented proposal to the Procedure Committee or the Modernisation Committee? In his statement he said that a broadly similar approach had nevertheless been agreed for choosing the Speakers of both Houses. It has not. In the House the next Speaker will be elected by exhaustive ballots.
	Introducing a preferential voting system will create a dangerous precedent. Are Ministers willing to accept preferential votes on matters like tax rates or the replacement of Trident? Will Members' individual preferential votes be published? If, after the ballot, the House passes an option without a majority of first preferences, should there not be a confirmatory vote, otherwise how could the Government claim that the proposals reflected the will of the House? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in such circumstances, the Government would not be justified in resorting to the Parliament Act?
	This proposal does not [Interruption.]

Theresa May: This proposal does not strengthen Parliament. We want a House of Lords elected by the many. The House as proposed would be selected bythe few. Far from making the Lords more independent, the proposal puts it in the gift of political parties. Far from strengthening Parliament, it risks losing the present benefits of the Lords. Far from removing cronyism, it perpetuates it. It is a lowest common denominator solution that will satisfy no one.

Jack Straw: I can sum up the right hon. Lady's comments by saying that she wants consensus and she wants reform, but not yet. She has no conceivable proposals for securing that reform. I said in my statement that the issue was difficult and complex, and that if the House wants reform, it will require compromise and it will take time. I am not suggesting that the proposals made in the White Paper are the last word on the mattercertainly not. It will be the subject of a free vote by all parties.
	My suggestionit is just my suggestion, and because the Cabinet has a free vote as well, it is not endorsed by the Cabinet and I never suggested that it wasfor50 per cent. is my suggestion, and I am happy to argue it through. However, if we have a preferential vote so that the House can come to a decision, and not end up with a train wreck as we did last time, it may well come to a different decision. On the basis of that different decision, we can introduce legislation which, I hope, can be the subject of the kind of constructive cross-party talks in which the right hon. Lady has happily engaged, although there was little reflection of that in the course of her comments.
	The right hon. Lady said that I did not mention democracy, but I did. One of the difficulties about the Lords at the moment is that, although it does a reasonable job, it is difficult for it to claim any kind of democratic mandate.

Simon Hughes: That is the way in which we will vote. Perhaps there are one or two unreconstructed colleagues, and I anticipate that their views will be reflected in contributions by Members from other parties later today.
	In a modern democracy in the 21st century, both Houses of Parliament must have elected people. The only position that we think is justifiable is that both Houses must have predominantly elected peopleMembers should all be elected in this House, and at least 80 per cent. of Members should be elected in the second Chamber.
	We have been willing to compromise in the interests of reaching an agreement. I think that we agree that there should be a two-Chamber Parliament, that there should be a stronger House of Commons and a strong House of Lords, that we must legislate and scrutinise better and that the primacy of the Commons will never be challenged by the Lords. That is where Governments stand and fall. We pay tribute to the fact that the House of Lords has done a good job up to now, but reform does not mean that it will do any less wellwe believe that it will do better.
	I have some brief questions for the Leader of the House. Will the Leader of the House accept that the proposal to have three in 10 of the new Members ofthe House of Lords as party political nominees flies in the face of current public opinion, which is that we should reduce patronage and not increase it? Will he accept that the proposal to keep prime ministerial nominations absolutely flies in the face of recent views about the rights of Prime Ministers? It would be better if that patronage were removed, so that everybody goes through the same appointment process. Labour's commitment to get rid of hereditary peers should be stuck to, because the existence of hereditary peers after we have had elections would be a clear anomaly. Finally, when we have electionsas we willeverybody should be entitled to express a preference anywhere in the United Kingdom for the candidate of their choice in the place of their choice. The list system is not a way to enhance democracy, but a way to reduce it.

Jack Straw: I think that the hon. Gentleman is saying, in traditionally extravagant language, and as he said in the papers today, that he regards my proposal as a dangerous precedent. It may not have occurred to him, but this House is about changethat is what we are here for.  [Interruption.] Well, not all the time, but what is the purpose of laws if not sometimes to change things? I remind the hon. Gentleman of what the Cambridge philosopher said about the principle of the dangerous precedent:
	you should not now do an admittedly right action for fear you, or your equally timid successors, should not have the courage to do right in some future case, which, ex hypothesi, is essentially different, but superficially resembles the present one.
	He goes on to say:
	Every public action which is not customary, either is wrong, or, if it is right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time.
	I note that none of those who have raised objections to the use of the alternative vote are raising objections as regards its meritsall they are saying is that they do not like it because it is something new and/or it could lead to the House making a decision. However, all three parties are committed to the House coming toa decision, and there will be not one but two opportunities, on the Divisions that will be put before the House, for the hon. Gentleman and his friends on both sides of the House to exercise their choice, through a straight yes/no ballot, on whether there should be any reform at all. He can vote yes or no, and if he wins, that is the end of the matter. If the vote were in favour of reform, then, yes, we would proceed to an alternative vote. At the top of the ballot, as is shown in the appendix to the White Paper, is the option of an all-appointed Chamber. I think that that is the hon. Gentleman's opinion. If he wins, that is what we will do; if he loses, that is called democracy.

Richard Shepherd: The preamble to the Parliament Act 1911 held out a better prospect than anything offered by the Leaderof the House today [Interruption.] I am just anticipating a situation that will come about. My point is that the demand for primacy of the Commons does not wash if the House of Lords is elected. The central proposition of a democratic system is that those who make the laws should be accountable to those who bear the laws. His proposals, and his extraordinary voting system, defeat that. Some Members of this House will welcome another House that can bring to check the dreams and ambitions of the Crown in Downing street and the Executive here.

Mr. Wayne David presented a Bill to amendsection 33 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 27 April, and to be printed. [Bill 58.]

Greg Clark: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to consider the impact of proposed drugs and treatments on carers and patients when assessing their cost effectiveness; and for connected purposes.
	I am pleased to see that the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) is present. It was very kind of her to come.
	This is a simple Bill to correct what I regard as a serious flaw in the way in which NICE evaluates proposed new drugs. At present it is required to balance the benefits to the patient against the costs to the national health service and the personal social services budget. On the face of it that would seem an extremely reasonable way of operating, until we consider that the benefits of many new treatments fall as much on carers as on the patients themselves. The requirement under which NICE operates is too restrictive in that regard.
	Let me make clear at the outset that I am not saying NICE should be allowed to breach the public-expenditure constraints under which it operates. Rightly, NICE is there to take a view, given the current level of resources for the NHS. I think, however, that if it were able to take account of the costs and the benefits to the quality of life of carers, a more sensible and rational balance could be achieved.
	I have no objection at all to the existence of NICE. I think it essential for the national health service to benefit from an independent body that is able properly to consider and weigh up the costs and benefits of different treatments. But NICE operates under directions from the Secretary of State, and those directions are very clear: it is required to take into account the clinical costs and benefits of proposed treatments. I think we could change that definition, and I think the Secretary of State for Health could change the directions that she gives to NICE.
	Let me give an example of an application of the guidance. Consideration was given to licensing a new class of drugs that can treat Alzheimer's disease. The drugs were assessed by NICE, and the most recent judgment was given in November this year in response to various appeals. The clinical effectiveness of the drugs is not in doubt, but they were withheld, and the recommendation is that they should continue to be withheld from people displaying the symptoms of mild Alzheimer's disease. That is not because they were not effective in slowing the progression of the disease, alleviating some of the symptoms and allowing people to have more self-confidence and to engage in everyday tasks. They were held not to be cost-effective, although the cost is about 2.50 a day.
	The key part of the appraisal that is missing relates to the impact on the cost of carers. The final appraisal document leading to the most recent NICE judgment states
	The Committee noted that the relevant NICE guidance on performing economic evaluations states that 'the evaluation should be conducted from the perspective of the NHS and PSS decision maker... The Committee therefore concluded that it would not be appropriate to include carer costs'.
	One of the principal effects of Alzheimer's disease is on carers for sufferers from that dreadful disease. The evidence is overwhelming. According to a recent survey, 72 per cent. of carers and sufferers felt that their symptoms were improved by the application of these drugs. It is also the case, crucially, that on average an hour a day of hands-on caring time was saved if the drugs were administered.
	I believe that the minimum wage is currently5.35 an hour. If the value of an hour's caring time were valued at the same rate as the national minimum wage, the benefit to carers would be twice the daily cost of the drugsand that is leaving aside the effect on patients themselves. It is at least arguable that an evaluation that was allowed to consider the effects on carers might come up with a different conclusion.
	I said that the evaluation did not take into account the effect on the quality of life of carers. Of course, that is significant too. In his recent review of social care for the King's Fund, Sir Derek Wanless described the extra caring burden as producing
	anxiety, depression and psychiatric illness, increased susceptibility to physical illness, lowered social functioning, increased rates of chronic diseases during episodes of caring and general negative impacts on physical well-being.
	The effects on carers deserve to be taken into account, and could well make a difference to the evaluation.
	I am not alone in concluding that we need to broaden the scope within which NICE is constrained to operate. As part of its consideration of the appeal, NICE asked five independent experts to comment on the evaluation process. Professor John O'Brien, of the Institute of Ageing and Health at Newcastle university, told NICE
	The economic model fails to take into account many significant benefits of the drugs, for example reduced carer time in supervising patients with dementia... to use this as the sole basis for decision making in this case remains a fundamental flaw.
	All five experts were of the same view: that the current NICE methodology was flawed.
	In his review, Sir Derek Wanless said
	the burden on informal carers is particularly acute with dementia care.
	That cost, he said, required greater attention. During the last Parliament, the House's own Health Committee concluded in one of its reports:
	we recommend that NICE should consider the wider societal costs and advantages of particular treatments.
	There are 290,000 people with Alzheimer's disease in England and Wales, more than 500 in each of our constituencies. Everyone knows a family with a member who suffers from that cruel disease, and everyone knows that, devastating though the consequences are for the sufferer, the effects on carers are even more distressing. It is painful enough for people to go through the process of seeing a loved one such as a father, a mother, a husband or a close friend suffering and, before their eyes, becoming a different person from the person they had known all their lives. That is a harrowing experience, the like of which most of us will never go through. However, for the carers of those people there is also a practical effect: their lives are transformed, as they become, effectively, full-time carers.
	We owe it to such people, who do heroic work on behalf of all of us by looking after their loved ones, to make sure that their role is recognised and respected in the evaluation of new treatments that come before NICE which can make a difference to Alzheimer's and many other diseases.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Greg Clark, Mike Penning, Mr. Jeremy Hunt. Mrs. Jacqui Lait, Mr. Mark Field and Mr. Adam Holloway.

Vincent Cable: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the Serious Fraud Office's (SFO) ongoing investigation into the sale by BAE Systems plc of a military air traffic control system to Tanzania and other arms-related inquiries; further notes that the SFO has ceased its investigation into BAE Systems plc and Saudi Arabia; calls for an independent inquiry into the reasons for the ending of the SFO investigation of the Saudi Arabian export sales; requests that there be laid before this House any papers or reports held by the Comptroller and Auditor General relating to the Al Yamamah arms agreement between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that have been prepared for committees of this House but not yet laid before it or published; and reaffirms the obligations of the United Kingdom under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
	I think that this will be a wide-ranging debate on the whole al-Yamamah saga, but that it will focus specifically on the Government's decision to discontinue the investigation into BAE Systems last month.
	The position of the Liberal Democrat party is that the Government's decision has done enormous damage, which has undermined the rule of law and Britain's reputation within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as a country that applies international law. It has also undermined both our reputation in the developing worldwhere the Government, through the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development in particular, lecture on corruptionand that of honest, good British companies that are trying to apply the law, whether in relation to financial services or manufacturing. It has also undermined the position of the House because of the anomalous situation in respect of the unpublished Public Accounts Committee report of 15 years ago, which, I understand, no Member presentincluding you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the Chairman of the Committeehas ever read.

Vincent Cable: As my hon. Friends just commented from a sedentary position, in that case there is absolutely nothing to be lost from publishing it. Moreover, I understand that The Daily Telegraph has reported this there was a second report in 1997, which updated the previous one and is more relevant to the account the hon. Gentleman describes, so why cannot that be published either?
	In proceeding with my argument, I wish first to pay tribute to some of the non-governmental organisations that have brought this issue to the light of day, particularly Transparency International, the Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House. I also pay tribute to Members of all parties who have tried to open up this debate. In that regard, I shall start by mentioning the debate in the other place last week led by Baroness Williams. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) has made a major contribution in his role on the PAC and through his ten-minute Bill. An excellent Adjournment debate was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George). Over the years, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) has persistently pursued the issue of corruption and BAE Systems. Pertinent questions have also been asked by my hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), for Lewes (Norman Baker) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath).
	There has been consistent interest in this issue among not only Liberal Democrat Members, but Labour Members. I can refer back as far as the late Robin Cook who in his attempt to introduce an ethical foreign policy repeatedly ran into a brick wall called BAE Systems. He recorded with some frustration in his diaries that:
	The Chairman of BAe Systems appeared to have the key to the garden door of No. 10.
	Other Members have also pursued the matter. I single out the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry), who has tried to do so on a multi-party basis, and the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), among others.
	I hope that we can also draw the Conservatives into this big tent because they frequently argue their belief in the rule of law. We know that there is some embarrassment over this matterand events of the past few weeks have reminded us why that is so. It was revealed in the  Financial Times that one of the names on the Swiss bank accounts that were being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office was Wafiq Said, who is well known. He is a long-standing, loyal and committed supporter of Oxford university and the Conservative party, and in his time he was, I believe, a close business associate of Mr. Jonathan Aitken, who played a key role in the al-Yamamah affairas people rememberas a Defence Minister, sandwiched between periods when I believe that he was a paid servant of the Saudi Government with an association with Prince Mohammed bin Fahd.
	A few weeks ago, there was a little reported piece of news that the authorities in Gibraltar had decided to grant residency status to Sir Mark Thatcher, waiving their normal rules about people with criminal records. He is now able to enjoy his retirement unmolested by the Inland Revenue, which might otherwise have been particularly interested in how he acquired his personal fortune. We know from the testimony of Mohammed Khilewi and from the large amount of documentation that he brought from Saudi Arabia, and from a deposition in this House made by Tam Dalyell when he was a Member which was based on American and BAE sources, that that fortune was acquired when he was resident at No. 10 Downing street on the basis of the al-Yamamah contract.
	However, those documents are small fry. There isan even more important set of documents thatbriefly appeared in the National Archives, after it had been been unintentionally deposited there by the Department of Trade and Industry. Fortunately, it was copied by the Campaign against Arms Trade before it was retrieved by the Government. It described the bitter battle that raged in Whitehall in the mid to late 1980s when the then Prime Minister and Michael Heseltine were fighting to ensure that there should be a taxpayers' loan guarantee of the al-Yamamah contract worth something in the order of 1.5 billionor2.8 billion at present prices. That was ferociously opposed by the Treasury, the Bank of England and the then Department of Energy as being wholly contrary to British interests and as putting seriously at risk British taxpayers' money. We do not know because none of us has read it, but I suspect that that was one of the elements addressed in the PAC report that we are not allowed to see.
	Let me bring the arguments up to date by dealing with the two big sets of unresolved issues that have emerged since the Attorney-General's statement of14 December. There are two groups of questions that we need to pursue. First, was there a secure basis for investigation by the SFO? We need to remember that the investigation was pursued by, I think, 18 officers over several years, and that it had at last identified two sets of key bank accounts leading to the sources of the inquiry. The inquiry, led by a professional prosecutor, had been advised that it could proceed by its silk, Mr. Tim Langdale QC. The head of the SFO has publicly stated that he believed that there were very good grounds for proceeding with the inquiry.
	On the strength of reading the papers for several hours, the Attorney-General came to the conclusion that the case was unlikely to succeed. How is that reconciled with the Attorney-General's acknowledgement toward the end of the debate last week in the other place that
	the SFO contemplated inviting BAE and certain BAE executives to plead guilty to certain charges.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 380.]
	Can the Ministers deconstruct the phrase contemplated inviting? My understanding is that BAE and certain of its executives were so invited. Were they, or were they not? Was a plea bargain offered, or not? If there was a plea bargain, what is the basis for arguing that there was no legal case? What is the precise position of the Ministry of Defence police, who were separately pursuing an inquiry into the role of MOD officials, who apparently were aware of the offences being committed, and apparently supported them? Has that inquiry been discontinued? Finally on the broad issue of the investigation, it is reported in the press today that the Attorney-General has launched an inquiry into the SFO's effectiveness in pursuing bribery cases? Is that correct? That is a little like somebody who has just escaped from Dartmoor demanding an inquiry into prison security.

John Spellar: Can the hon. Gentleman, who has been speaking for some11 minutes, tell us whether he thinks it a good or a bad idea to sell planes to Saudi Arabia? Secondly, not once has he mentioned all the jobs that the contract has created for ordinary workers in this country. Does he have no interest in or concern about that issue?

Vincent Cable: Yes, the issue of jobs is of course important, and it does concern me and I will return to it. However and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, it is not relevant to the anti-bribery case and is specifically precluded by the convention. There is another issue, which I hope that he will face: whether he believes, however important employment is, that a situation in which jobs are subsidised or underwritten by the taxpayer, underpinned by corruption and subject to blackmail by the customer is sustainable. That said, jobs are clearly important and I will return to that theme.
	Let me turn, as I said, to national security. I am one of those Members who have signed the Official Secrets Act and who worked alongside the security services in an earlier job, so I have a great deal of respect for that Act and those services, and we should take very seriously any advice on national security that they give us. The problem here is not the security services, but how their advice has been used. The Attorney-General said in his original statement that
	the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Defence Secretaries ... have expressed the clear view that continuation of the investigation would cause serious damage to UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic co-operation.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 14 December 2006; Vol. 687, c. 1712.]
	The following day, three broadsheets were briefed, apparently by the head of the Secret Intelligence Service himself, who rejected the assertion that the Saudis would sever links and said that he had refused to sign a dossier stating that MI6 endorsed this assertion in advance. Subsequently, and understandably in view of that, the Government diluted their argumentso much so that, at the end of the debate in the other place last week, the Attorney-General was reduced to producing the following, utterly anodyne comment:
	The SIS has authorised me to say that it is clear about the importance of the Saudi counterterrorist effort to the UK.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2006; Vol. 689,c. 379.]
	Well, we can all agree with that.
	One of two conclusions must emerge. The Prime Minister has done what he did in the case of Iraq, which was to exaggerate and distort the advice received from the security services; alternatively and much more alarmingly, he was right, and the Saudi authorities, who are supposed to be our allies, are threatening us with terrorism.

Vincent Cable: One practical way in which the Minister for the Middle East, who I think will be speaking next, could help us is by giving some indication of how the advice from the Saudi Government was received. If it was a formal demarche from the Saudi authorities,that is of a very different order from the British ambassador's having tea with one of his contacts and passing on his impression of what might be the case. It would help if the Minister clarified how we were briefed by the Saudis.
	Let me turn to the history of this issue. The al-Yamamah contract originated in the mid-1980s, and the context is often forgotten. It was not achieved primarily as a result of competition and British technological excellence; the context at that time was the very close relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States, which both sides wished to perpetuate. However, the problem was that, as President Reagan provided Saudi Arabia with more and more sophisticated equipment, there were objections from Israel. Perfectly understandably, the Israelis were concerned about one of their potential adversaries acquiring sophisticated technology. The situation was not helped, of course, by the tirade of anti-Semitic abuse that often comes from the Saudi authorities. Israel protested, and friends of Israel in the United States Congress blocked the F-15 deal, which was in turn passed on to Britain and Mrs. Thatcher.
	The Reagan Administration were very anxious to bless this arrangement. They owed the Saudis various favours. They were supporting the Nicaraguan Contras and helping gallant freedom fighters in Afghanistansuch as Osama bin Laden. Reagan was perfectly happy to support this British arrangement, which proved to be one of the largest arms deals in history. It has been worth about 40 billion to date, and could be worth something of the same magnitude again in the future. It is not merely an arms deal, but one of extraordinary complexity that involves two major subsidiary features. One is an offset agreement, which, essentially, is a joint venture set of arrangements under which British companies put in capital and expertise, and their Saudi partners take their cut. There is also an oil element. There was an oil barter arrangement whereby oil was marketed, initially by Shell and BP, and the proceeds were routed through the MOD to BAE Systems.
	There was much criticism of these arrangements in the Treasury. Of course, the British taxpayer was taking the risk of oil price fluctuations. One consequenceof the deal was that Saudi over-produced and drove down the price of oil, damaged the British North sea oil industryamong other thingsand contributed to the lack of capacity that we are experiencing.

Dominic Grieve: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point, but I am interested in trying to understand whether with the benefit of hindsight he still considers that the deal was bad for Britain. That was not quite the impression that I had of a deal that had apparently delivered 40 billion of commercial benefits. If we look at the matter commercially, is he now saying that those opinions were right and that the deal was wrong? Or is he actually, as he develops his speech, pointing out how wrong some people were back in the 1980s about whether the deal would endure and confer benefits on the country?

Vincent Cable: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should consult his former colleague, John McGregor, who has exceptionally strong views about the abuse of taxpayers' money in that context.
	At the heart of the controversy is the way in which that complex contract led to corruption. Nobody has ever denied that large commission payments and corruption were involved in this case. Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to the United States, fully acknowledged that over three decades roughly50 million of the 40 billion spent by the Saudis was creamed off in the form of commissions to the royal family, adding, So what?
	We knowfrom people who have left the service of BAE Systems and sources such as Charles Freeman, who was the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and the CIA, whose material has been publishedthe way in which the slush funds operated. It is a long story, so I shall give the House a flavour of what happened through one or two vignettes. For example, in 1995, Prince Turki bin Nasr, who was head of the air force and one of the main recipients of commissions, went on a shopping trip. At some point, he and his party must have run out of plastic bags, because they ordered a cargo plane to take the shopping back to Saudi Arabia. They then billed BAE Systems for 165,000. In 2000, the same Minister paid a visit to the then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), and was sufficiently stressed by the experience to need to clock into a health clinic for a couple of days, for which he billed BAE Systems 30,327. We know from the same sources that that Minister was paid roughly3 million a year. His monthly credit card bill of 100,000 was routinely accepted.
	All that was justifiedit has just been justified again by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), a former Defence Ministerin the interest of jobs. As a constituency MP who frequently defends jobs in his constituency, I think that it is proper and appropriate for Members to advance that argument, but the issue is whether those jobs were justified by the way in which this matter proceeded. As I pointed out to the right hon. Member for Warley, those jobs were heavily subsidised and underwritten by the taxpayer, underpinned by corruption and eventually made us subject to blackmail. However, I accept that jobs were created by the project, and my final points centre on that issue. Employment was of course created in that industry and that company. The question is whether the price was worth paying and we need also to ask what that price was.

Malcolm Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman says that he has reached his final comments, but he has not yet addressed the issue of whether in the rare circumstances in which national security could have been endangered it is legitimate not to pursue a prosecution. Is he saying that even if he were satisfied that national security might have been significantly endangered by the continuation of the work of the Serious Fraud Office and the bringing of charges it would still have been wrong to terminate the prosecution?

Vincent Cable: The hon. Gentleman has tried once, and I am sure that he will have another attempt shortly.
	The report was suppressed in 1992, but it is now clear that the reason had nothing to do with national security, because the whole al-Qaeda operation was not in flow thenindeed, it was on our side. The Chairman of the PAC at the time was Bob Sheldon, who said that the report would have embarrassed the Saudis, but how could that possibly have happened? Everything about commissions and bribery in Saudi Arabia is in the public domain already.
	It appears that Crown Prince Sultan has been one of the main recipients of the funding. He was described on television by his own nephew as the most corrupt Minister in the world. I cannot imagine that the House of Commons Clerks, or the Comptroller and Auditor General, could craft a more damaging phrase.
	The details of the corruption in Saudi Arabia are presented in many publications, but I recommend the one by Mr. Sandy Mitchell and his collaborator Bob Hollingsworth. Mr. Mitchell was a Glaswegian medical technician who was arrested and charged with terrorism because the Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Naif, wanted to pretend that al-Qaeda terrorism was committed not by Saudis but by
	British intelligence and the Jews.
	That was the opinion of one of Britain's allies. Mr. Mitchell was detained in prison for three years, brutally tortured and sentenced to be executednot by the humane method of beheading but by crucifixion. He has, of course, been released, as that sentence was ludicrous even by Saudi Arabian standards of judicial inquiry, but he is a very angry man. He is very angry with the Saudis, but also with the British Government, who dragged their feet repeatedly and made it clear that his plight, and that of his fellow suspects, was far less important that the pursuit of an arms contract in Saudi Arabia.

Mike O'Brien: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	'notes that the Serious Fraud Office's (SFO) decision to discontinue its investigation into BAE Systems plc and Saudi Arabia was taken independently by the Director of the SFO on grounds of national security in the public interest and in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors; further notes that the SFO is vigorously pursuing a number of other lines of investigation in relation to BAE Systems plc; welcomes the steps being taken by the Government to tackle international corruption; and further welcomes the Government's commitment to compliance with the United Kingdom's obligation under the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.'.
	I suppose that one could say that this case has it all for the headline-grabbing MParms deals, Arab princes and a big corporation, as well as allegations of corruption and of Swiss bank accounts. In reality, however, it is all about the rule of law, and it is on that I want to focus.

John Spellar: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Simon Hughes: The Solicitor-General knows that no one on the Liberal Democrat Benches has impugned the integrity of the director of the SFO. We have said that we want the Solicitor-General to explain why the Government's explanation has regularly changed? When the Attorney-General was asked in the debate in the other place about the phrase used in the explanation
	balancing the rule of law against the wider public interest
	why did he say:
	On reflection, I think that there is a risk of misunderstanding in those words ... I am very happy ... to make it clear ... that there is no question of saying that the rule of law in general should be set aside for wider interests of expediency or political or national interest.?[ Official Report, House of Lords,1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 381.]
	That is not what we were told in December, but it is what the Attorney-General said on 1 February?

Mike O'Brien: What is the hon. Gentleman implying? Does he seriously imply that the person who made the decisionthe director of the Serious Fraud Officedid not make it based on the prosecutor's criteria of which the hon. Gentleman is well aware? Those criteria include looking at the evidence and at the public interest. It was perfectly right for the director of the SFO, and indeed for Law Officers who looked at the issue subsequently, to take a view in relation tothe public interest. That is according to the rule of law. The hon. Gentleman's innuendo, or assumption, that the procedure was improper is not acceptable.

Mike O'Brien: I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention.
	Members of the House have not been kept in the dark about the reasons for the decision. There is no mystery about the main issues in the case. The Attorney-General and I have given full explanations in both Houses, answered questions and corresponded with Members of both Houses.
	The key issue is the crucial importance of Saudi Arabia as a partner in the UK's fight against terrorism. Saudi Arabia is a source of valuable streams of intelligence on al-Qaeda and other terrorist activity that may represent a threat to our citizens in this country and abroad, and to our armed forces. Saudi Arabia also plays a key role in the Government's efforts to promote peace and stability in the middle east.
	If the investigation had gone ahead, the judgment was that there was a real danger that Saudi Arabia would withdraw its co-operation on counter-terrorism. We would be deprived of a key partner in our counter-terrorism strategy and UK lives would be put at risk. The importance of the UK's relationship withSaudi Arabia in the fight against terrorism is clear to everyone.
	I want to deal with some of the ill-informed and mischievous comments made by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) about the security services and the Secret Intelligence Service. His comments were ill-informed because SIS is clear about the importance of the Saudi counter-terrorist effort to the UK. It would not be possible to replicate the counter-terrorism effort that has been achieved with the Saudis on UK-Saudi aspects of the problem if it were necessary to work at one remove, say through the USA, orsome other liaisonif that is what Members would prefer.
	SIS has made it clear that it shared the concerns about the possible consequences for the public interest of the SFO investigation. SIS considered that there was a risk to the UK's national security interests from pursuing the al-Yamamah investigation, and had been informed of the threat to curtail operations directly. At no stage did SIS or anyone else who was consulted disagree with the overall assessment that the Saudi threats were real. SIS agreed that, although it did not know for certain that the threat would be carried out, it had to be taken seriously.
	Before the SFO decision was taken, the Attorney-General and I discussed the matter with the chief of SIS. His view was that the Saudis might withdraw their co-operation if the SFO investigation continued, and that they might decide to do so at any time. It was estimated that further investigation of the case would take 18 months. That would be 18 months of public pressure on the relationship between our countries, with allegations flying around in the media about the Saudi Government and questions being asked about the dealings of senior members of the Saudi Governmentwith no guarantee at all of prosecution.
	Having been advised of that risk, the director of the SFO concluded that it was not a risk that could properly be run in the public interest and that the investigation should be halted, and he did that according to the law. The Attorney-General agreed with the director's decision to stop the case, having regard to his own view that the case was unlikely to lead to a successful prosecution in any event. The director of the SFO's decision was not easy, but it had to be taken. Those who criticise the decision need to ask themselves what they would have done. Would they have risked throwing away our crucial relationship with Saudi Arabia on counter-terrorism co-operation, for the sake of pursuing an uncertain case?

Rob Marris: May I take my hon. and learned Friend back to when he referred to the Attorney-General coming to the decision that the investigation was going nowhere? The SFO was investigating under the law that the Government tightened in 2002. Does he share my surprise at the position of the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable)? The hon. Gentleman said that British Aerospace openly said, Yes, we paid, but it was to the Saudi Government. It was all out in the open, and he said that everything in Saudi Arabia is in the public domain. Does that approach not suggest that, after two and half years, the investigation was going nowhere, because everything was out in the open and there had been no prosecution brought in this country, and that the investigation was just dragging on and going nowhere?

Mike O'Brien: The Attorney-General spent not, as the hon. Member for Twickenham put it, a few hours, but several daysI well remember him taking home large bundles of files for considerable periods of timegoing through the detail. I spent quite a considerable time looking at the evidence as well, although, I have to confess, not as long as the Attorney-General. He formed the view that it was unlikely for legal as well as other reasons that a prosecution would succeed. It is the case that the director of the Serious Fraud Office thought that there might be some ability to continue investigating and that it might be able to prosecute, but that was likely to take a further 18 months and there were consequences in terms of Britain's national and international security relationships, which were, in our view, likely to be damaged.

Simon Hughes: The Solicitor-General has raised the issue that the Attorney-General raised last week in the House of Lords. On what date did the director ofthe Serious Fraud Office contemplate, to use the words of the Attorney-General,
	inviting BAE and certain BAE executives to plead guilty to certain charges.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 380.]
	and on what date was the decision taken that that course should not be pursued?

Mike O'Brien: I cannot remember the precise date. It would probably be about the end of the first week of December. That is my recollection of when I first heard that possibility floated, but it was no more than that. I would have to check again because I was not directly involved in some of those discussions. Let me write to the hon. Gentleman. In terms of when that course was no longer pursued, the answer is obviously when a decision was made on 14 December not to pursue it. The director of the Serious Fraud Office had indicated his view to us on 13 December. At that point, it was effectively no longer on the table. I am not sure, in a sense, in real terms, that it ever was. It was something that was discussed, but action was never taken on it. I am not aware of any offer that was ever made in relation to a plea bargain. It was merely considered, but the director of the Serious Fraud Office took the view that it should not be pursued.
	Mention has been made of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development anti-bribery convention. Let me make this clear: the Government remain entirely supportive of the convention. The SFO director and the Attorney-General are firmly of the view that the decision taken in relation to the Saudi case was wholly compatible with article 5 of the convention. We do not believe that the convention does, or was ever intended to, prevent national authorities from taking decisions on the basis of fundamental considerations of national and international security and we do not believe that we or any other state would have signed up to the convention on that basis.
	Stopping the SFO al-Yamamah case does not mean that we are backing off from our commitment to tackle international corruption. On the contrary, we are clear that we need to redouble our efforts. No company is above the law. The SFO is actively pursuing a number of investigations into suspected international corruption involving BAE systems. I do not prejudge any of those investigations. BAE denies corruption in relation to those matters and it is right that it should be given the benefit of the doubt, as should all defendants. For the information of the House, the countries affected are South Africa, Romania, Tanzania and the Czech Republic. There are also inquiries in Chile and Qatar The SFO is also engaged in seven other cases involving suspected bribery or corruption overseas, as well as fraud. They include investigations relating to Bosnia, Nigeria, Zambia, Costa Rica and Egypt. Those too are active cases. For example, in the Costa Rica case, relating to PWS reinsurance, on 30 January, the SFO and officers of the newly formed City of London police overseas corruption unit executed warrants at six sites in the UK and arrested four people. The Attorney-General has told the SFO that it should pursue those cases vigorously. The clear message is that no British company or individual is above the law or immune from action in this area.

Dominic Grieve: I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on presenting a debate on what is without doubt a very important issue. The question of the discontinuance of the Serious Fraud Office investigation, the role of the Attorney-General and the director of the Serious Fraud Office in doing that, and the consultation with Ministers before it took place are all highly legitimate issues for debate in the House. The fact that we have an opportunity to debate them is clearly of great value. I shall come back to that aspect of the matter in a few moments.
	I hope that the hon. Member for Twickenham will forgive my saying this, but it is noteworthy that the Liberal Democrat motion was very widely drawn. It is also noteworthy that he did not raise some aspects of the motion at all in the course of the debate, which came as a slight surprise to me. There was no reference to the very important issue of the sale of the military air traffic control system to Tanzania, though that may be because the matter was extensively debated on a Conservative Opposition motion on 30 January.
	More tellingly, although the motion calls for an inquiry into the circumstances of the SFO action, the hon. Member for Twickenham made no mention of it. That made me wonder whether his views on the matter were now so set in stone that he did not consider that any independent inquiry was needed in any event [Interruption.] I hear reference made on the Liberal Democrat Benches to lawyers' comments; the hon. Member for Twickenham will hear more of them in a few moments. As I listened to what he had to say and as I tried to conduct a reasonably objective analysis of some really serious matters, I started to have increasing worries about the way in which he was carrying his reasoning forward.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham raised a number of issues about the initial principle of the al-Yamamah agreement. That seems a perfectly legitimate issue of debate. It is an old matter, going back to the 1980s and it was, of course, negotiated by a Conservative Government and, seeing that its provisions have been renewed, continued by a Labour Government. It is, by any showing, an unusual arrangement. It is unusual because it is a Government-to-Government agreement and because of the methods of payment under it, as it is partly paid for by Saudi oilwhich is unusual in itself. It is a relationship package at a Government-to-Government level rather than an ordinary commercial agreement. That is perfectly clear. As such, when the hon. Gentleman said that he disliked the arrangements, he was raising a perfectly legitimate point, albeit one that it is somewhat ancient history.
	I come back to an issue that I raised with the hon. Gentleman when I intervened earlier. What was difficult to understand was how he succeededin a virtuoso performancein conflating his dislike ofthe arrangements with the suggestion that it was economically disadvantageous. I must say that thatwas the first time that I had heard that suggested, and it was the point in his argument at which I began to think that I might not be inhabiting the same planet as him. I ask him about it again, as I hope there may be an opportunity to deal further with it in the summing-up. It is possible to argue that we should not have such relations with Saudi Arabia or that such Government-to-Government agreements are undesirable and should never be embarked on, but the suggestion that the agreement is economically disadvantageous for this country requires rather more justification than he was able to provide.
	Equally, the hon. Gentleman did not deal at allor at least he skated overanother important question of whether the agreement as a package was advantageous or disadvantageous for our national security and national interest. I hope that at some point we will hear from the Liberal Democrats whether they believe that the nature of the agreement and the building of relations with another state in the middle eastan area of instabilityin the form that the al-Yamamah agreement has undoubtedly achieved is desirable or not. Some of the arguments that the hon. Gentleman went on to make must be viewed in that light, and we are surely entitled to know what the Liberal Democrats think of the basic principle of the security co-operation between the two Governments. As far as I can tellI look carefully at my notesthat was entirely skated over. That may be convenient for the hon. Gentleman in characterising the Liberal Democrat approach of never committing to anything.  [Interruption.] I look forward to hearing more about that.

Martin Horwood: The hon. Gentleman talks about the economic benefits of the deal and the value of relations with Saudi Arabia.The Solicitor-General mentioned part of article 5 of the OECD convention on bribery, but is the hon. Gentleman aware that the rest of it reads:
	Investigation and prosecution of the bribery... shall not be influenced by considerations of national economic interest
	or
	the potential effect upon relations with another state?
	Those considerations are not materialor they should not be materialto the dropping of the investigation.

Dominic Grieve: Yes, I understand that, which is why I intervened to make the point that, as so often happens in the House, when decisions are made, some people say that they are a good idea and others say that they are a bad idea. However, we are now 20 years down the road, and my impression was that the hon. Gentleman was unable to come to the conclusion that this had been a financially disadvantageous package. That rather undermines the reasons for raising the issue in the first place. It rather coloured my view of the judgments that he went on to exercise on other matters.
	To return to the point raised by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), I entirely accept that, on the question of the discontinuance of the SFO investigation, the economic advantage to this country cannot come into play. He was quite right about that. I want to turn to that issue now. When we remove the froth around it that I have tried to identify, we see that it is the main issue that the hon. Member for Twickenham wishes to debate. It is worthy of debate and of great importance. I had had very little reason to focus on the issue until shortly before the Attorney-General made his announcement in the other place and the Solicitor-General made the announcement on behalf of the Government here.
	When someone tells me that they are going to announce the discontinuance of an SFO investigation, it seems incumbent on me to focus on the issues involved and to do the best I can to analyse whether the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General are trying to pull the wool over Parliament's eyes, whether it is an attempt at a sordid deception of the House, whether it is another example of the perpetration of systematic deceit of a serious nature from within the Government, or whether in fact the argument might have some force.
	I accept that we do not know all the facts of the case. That is a very real issue, and one reason why it is legitimate to debate the matter. The hon. Member for Twickenham said that, as far as he could tell, payments made by BAE Systems to third parties under the al-Yamamah contract had been open and made with the knowledge of the Saudi authorities. All my inquiries have also suggested that that is the case. That raises some interesting legal issues.
	The hon. Gentleman may properly argue that the complex nature of the al-Yamamah contract and the relationships between the Governments were of a kind that we should not have embarked onor continued to pursue, as this Government have done. However, itis becoming clear to my mindI am trying to apply a lawyer's mind to the matterthat there isa considerable difficulty, because there does notappear to have been a criminal offence committed by anyone.
	There might be other facts available to the SFO. Other issues might have coloured its decisions. Perhaps secret payments were made that we do not know about. However, the basic ingredients of corruptionhon. Members may go off and look this up in the bookinvolve someone paying secret commissions to the agent of the party with whom he is dealing, to encourage the agent to favour him with a continuing contract on behalf of the principal. That is the foundation of the offence. At times in the House we have raisedand will, no doubt, continue to raiseserious anxieties that certain companies might be doing that. Reference was made to France, where, I regret to say, there has been ample evidence that French companies have been corrupting the officials of foreign Governments on a serial basis for many years. That might be done in this country as well, in an international setting. I suspect that it was certainly done before the passing of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, and if it is still being done, it is a serious criminal offence, even if it is done abroad.
	When I was confronted with this issue, I went off to do a bit of research and make some inquiries. It seemed to me that the Attorney-General might have a point when he said that he thought that the inquiry might be going nowhere. On the face of it, there can be no prosecution if there was an agreement to give commission payments to certain agents of the Saudi Government, with the full knowledge of the Saudi Government, as part of the overall contractual arrangements. Reprehensible as it may be that that would enable certain people to go on shopping sprees around London and to take planes back to their country, and that some individuals in Saudi Arabia have Swiss bank accounts, none of those things amounts to the commission of a criminal offence. The Attorney-General and the other Law Officers have to focus on whether a criminal offence has been committed, and whether continuing an inquiry would be productive.

Mike O'Brien: I have listened with care to the hon. Gentleman's argument. He has raised the issue of the law of agency, which was of serious concern to the Attorney-General and me while we were looking at this matter. I can confirm that the law of agency was also one of the issues that the director of the SFO was looking at, along with the question of how wewould be able to ask the appropriate questions, in view of the difficult circumstances relating to the Saudi Government. That is a significant problem in relation to this matter. On the issue of agency and whether there would have been a case, the hon. Gentleman raises some important pointsindeed, points that the Attorney-General and I felt caused great concern, particularly if they meant that there would have to be 18 months of investigation before we could even come to the conclusion that there was no case to answer.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for his comments, which remind me that I have not dealt with the first, and equally important, point raisedby the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), although I was in a sense coming to it.
	I am not sure that I entirely agree with the hon. Gentlemanthe Solicitor-General may be able to correct meon the concerns that weighed on the mind of the Attorney-General and the director of the Serious Fraud Office when they looked into the matter. After the briefing that I attended, at which the hon. Gentleman was present, I was left with the impression that the public interest issue was viewed in light of uncertainties about whether a prosecution could be successful. It seems perfectly proper to weigh those two considerations in the same balance, and for one to have an impact on the other. I also had the impression that it was not simply the public interest test that led the director of the Serious Fraud Office, having discussed the matter with the Attorney-General, to decide to discontinue the investigation. I saw the two factors as running together. I am sure that the Solicitor-General will correct me if I am wrong.

Simon Hughes: I have just one other point to make, because I do not want there to be disagreement where there need not be. The hon. Gentleman and I were indeed both at the meeting with the Solicitor-General, and I am clear about the fact that both considerations were in play. The questions on the Law Officers' minds were how much evidence there was, and what the national interest was. In the end, it was national interest that pulled the plug on the investigation, because in any event, irrespective of the Attorney-General's view of where the investigation was going, they took the decision that they deemed necessary at the time. The hon. Gentleman and I are both clear that that was the decisive cause for the decision, but whether there would have been sufficient evidence to ensure a50 per cent. chance of conviction is an open question.

Roger Berry: It is a pleasure to take part in this important debate. As my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said, the Serious Fraud Office decision was a difficult decision and an uncomfortable one, so it is not surprising that some of us still have to be satisfied that it was the right decision. I say at the outset that I find it difficult to be persuaded that the decision by the SFO to suspend the investigation into BAE Systems and the al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia was the right decision.
	I shall make and have made no allegations of unlawful activity by any company, any Government or any individual in relation to the matter. I share the concerns of my hon. and learned Friend. In the debate today and in the debate on Tanzania last week, I heard it alleged that Governments, for example, have been involved in bribery, when there is not a shred of evidence for that. However, I am slightly amused when I hear it suggested that there has never, ever been any shred of evidence that bribery and corruption have been evident in any arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
	I shall give one example. I saw Newsnight on16 June 2006, when the former Defence Secretary, the noble Lord Gilmour, clearly stated that Britain bribed senior Saudi officials to secure arms contracts. Do not believe me, believe  The Daily Telegraph of 17 June last year, in which Lord Gilmour was quoted as saying:
	'You either got the business and bribed, or you didn't bribe and didn't get the business.'
	I am the first to say that that is not a reference about today or about recent years, but I find it strange that there are still those who deny that there has ever been anybody who has provided any significant evidence of bribery at any time in relation to al-Yamamah.
	If a Defence Secretary cannot be trusted[Hon. Members: He was not a Defence Secretary.] May I quote again?  The Daily Telegraph refers to him as
	a former Tory defence secretary.
	I will take an intervention to correct  The Daily Telegraph any time.

Roger Berry: I am delighted. I hope that that is the final intervention on the point. I did not see the wording of the motions until this morning, so I did not have time to do my own research. I apologise to the House.

Malcolm Rifkind: I misled the hon. Gentleman. I have now had the opportunity to check. Lord Gilmour became briefly, for two or three months, Secretaryof State for Defence at the end of Mr. Heath's Government, when Lord Carrington was moved to another post. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. He was technically correct.

Judy Mallaber: Will my hon. Friend comment on the excellent and positive briefing that we, as members of the Quadripartite Committee on Strategic Export Controls, which my hon. Friend chairs, both received this morning from Foreign Office officials on the work that they are doing to take forward our submission to the UN on developing an international arms trade treaty? Does he have any concerns about the impact that the questionsraised today might have on that continuing and positive work, in which the Government have played a leading role?

Mike O'Brien: My hon. Friend has raised an important point. Merely causing problems in terms of a relationship with another friendly state is not in itself sufficient justification for, as he described it, pulling the plug on an investigation. However, where national security is directly affected by that relationship, it was never the intention of this country when we signed up to that convention to say that we would not take into account the risk posed by terrorism to this country when considering whether to continue a case. Quite legitimately, the director of the SFO examined the convention and took the view that the full text of article 5, including the relationship with other countries, did not preclude his taking into account terrorism and the need to maintain relationships that enable our national security and international security to be properly protected. The Law Officers and, in terms of making the decision itself, the director of the SFO acted entirely in accord with that convention.

Roger Berry: That longish intervention is clearly helpful to the debate. I await the outcome of the OECD investigation, and if the OECD expresses a contrary view, this House must re-examine the matter.I remain unconvinced that it is absolutely clearthat the SFO has acted in accordance with theOECD conventionI am not a lawyer, but I have my doubts.
	I find it difficult to accept the argument that Saudi Arabiathe hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) has made this pointwould not share intelligence to combat terrorism. Saudi Arabia has at least as big a stake in fighting terrorism as anyone else, although I do not expect my hon. and learned Friend the Minister to provide cast iron evidence to the House. I sincerely hope that in the not-too-distant future a Committee of this House will have the opportunity to scrutinise that argument a little more closely.
	Like the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), I am also cautious about the value of intelligence from Saudi Arabia. I am not picking on that country, because that is the nature of the case that we are considering. Year after year, the Government's human rights reports comment on infringements of human rights in Saudi Arabiafor example, torture and ill treatment in prison. I feel uncomfortable in assuming that information gathered by intelligence services will always be reliable in a society where, as the Government have pointed out, there is very limited press freedom, the rule of law is not as robust as in other countries and there is torture and maltreatment in prisons. The hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned the case of Sandy Mitchell; I will not repeat that.
	I acknowledge that we are going back three years and accept that the Government will argue that there has been massive progress in the past two years. I hope that there has, but I remain uncomfortable about accepting on face value intelligence from a country that has had, and does have, serious problems with human rights.

Malcolm Rifkind: Although I disagree with the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry), I must say, in the light of my intervention, that he made what was technically a very good speech.
	I do not normally start with a presumption in favour of the Government, but I do so on this occasion, and nothing that the hon. Member for Twickenham(Dr. Cable) said has affected that. I accept that, on the face of it, the Government start from a bad position. We do not pay lip service to but genuinely believe in the rule of law, yet the Serious Fraud Office, either on its own initiative or through Government representations, which were undoubtedly made, decided to discontinue a serious inquiry that had been going on for a long time. That led to criticism from the OECD, and criticism from the South African President of double standards. Clearly, the position is embarrassing, and we would all have preferred to avoid it.
	That is not good enough, however. We must consider whether the rule of lawtechnically applied to mean that, when one has evidence, one brings a prosecution against those deemed responsibleshould always prevail or whether there can be circumstances, albeit rare, when that is not proper. It has already been said that, for many years, when deciding whether to bring a prosecution, it has been necessary to ask not only whether there is sufficient evidence but whether the public interest justifies it. In the debate in another place, my noble Friend Lord Mayhew, a former Attorney-General, referred to an occasion in Northern Ireland when he was involved in a decision not to go ahead with a prosecution because of the wider public interest.
	We must bear it in mind that, when we talk about our commitment to the rule of law, it is not an end in itself. It is simply a crucial method of trying to achieve a decent and just society, in which people's rights are recognised and justice can be applied. It is not an end in itself. If there is a wider public interest, there is nothing improper about taking that into account.
	The decision is not easy. It would be much more difficult to justify what has happened on the occasion that we are considering if an individual citizen's rights had been impeded. If, for example, someone is locked up for 90 days without trial, that is not easy to justify, even if there is a wider national interest, because a person's liberty has been removed. If someone is murdered or assaulted and, despite the availability of evidence, a prosecution is not initiated because of some wider public interest, that is disturbing because the decision impedes someone's rights.
	That is not the position that we are considering, however. Rightly or wrongly, the issue at stake is not the individual's rights but those of society. No one disputesindeed, the hon. Member for Twickenham agreedthat if there are legitimate issues of national security, it is right and proper for them occasionally to prevail over a decision to take a prosecution forward. The hon. Gentleman is nodding in agreement with my interpretation of his views. The question that must be addressed is: were there legitimate reasons of national security that justified the decision in this case? The honest answer is that none of us in the Chamber knows, as we are not privy to the most important intelligence information available. The Serious Fraud Office did not know. I suspect that the Attorney-General may not have known, except at second or third hand. The person who has the ultimate responsibility is the Prime Minister.
	From my experience as Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary, when I had access to intelligence information and had to deal with Saudi Arabia over the course of five years, I can say two things. First, I have no doubt that the kind of co-operation that Saudi Arabia is giving to the United Kingdom with regard to counter-terrorism measures is of enormous importance in enabling us to succeed in our objectives of dealing with terrorism. Secondly, I can comment on whether the Saudis were serious in their threats that that co-operation would cease if the inquiry continued.
	Several hon. Members have said that it is absurd to argue that the Saudis would have discontinued their co-operation when their own regime is threatened by al-Qaeda. That is logically correct, but I was once told that logic was the art of going wrong with confidence, and I believe that that applies on this occasion. Anyone who understands the regime in force in Saudi Arabia knows that one is not dealing with a single head of statelike the Shah of Iran in his heydaybut with a royal family, a clan, who are intensely jealous of their privileges and determined to ensure that there will be no, as they would see it, unacceptable investigation of how they go about their lives.
	From my experience with the Saudis, I have no doubt that they would almost certainly have carried out the threat, even if they were cutting off their nose to spite their face. That was the dilemma that the Government faced. The judgment was a difficult one, and the Prime Ministerwho, I assume, ultimately gave the advice that had to be taken on board by the Attorney-General and the SFOwas right on this occasion.

Martin Horwood: I am conscious of the time, so I shall try to be brief.
	This is a vital debate. The Government argued quite aggressively that there was a national interest in the case being dropped, and even that such a decision was compatible with the OECD convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions. Those are highly debatable points, and I am inclined to agree with the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry) in disputing them, but mine is a different argument. My argument is that there were simple and vital reasons to continue the investigation, and that they were not considered.
	On 24 January, I questioned the Secretary of State for International Development. In answering, he revealedastonishinglythat he had not been consulted by the Attorney-General over the dropping of the BAE Systems case. He rather disingenuously suggested that that was because the only material conversation was taking place between the Attorney-General and the Serious Fraud Office, but of course that was not the case. The Attorney-General sought the advice of the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence, and also the views of the Prime Minister. In fact, the Prime Minister was extremely generous with his views: the answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) revealed that he had updated advice in September 2006 and again in December 2006. He had given his views on three occasions.
	The one Minister who was not consulted was the very Minister who was charged with pursuing Government policy on corruption and bribery in international corporate deals. Let me, for a moment, praise Government policy, because Government policy on bribery and corruption in this particular respect is very good on paper. Let me give the House chapter and verse. On 26 October, the Secretary of State for International Development set out the reasons for the anti-corruption plan very eloquently. He said:
	Bad governance can be caused or made worse by the actions of rich countries and their companies. For every bribe taken, there has to be a bribe giver.
	He said:
	we can and must do more.
	He said:
	Our new anti-corruption action plan will help us to do that by investigating and prosecuting bribery cases.[ Official Report, 26 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 1739.]
	In other words, there is a virtue in prosecuting bribery cases even when it is otherwise inconvenient to do so. They should be pursued, and there is a national interest in pursuing them.
	Let us examine the detail of the United Kingdom action plan to combat international corruption. It states that we should
	Fully implement the new OECD 'action statement' on export credits.
	That documentthere is quite a paper trail heretalks of
	Informing exporters and, where appropriate, applicants, requesting support about the legal consequences of bribery in international business transactions.
	That is rather difficult to do. It is rather difficult to demonstrate the consequences of bribery if the consequence is nothing when a case is dropped. Of course, we cannot and would not want to assert that there was definitely bribery in the precise case involving BAE Systems that was being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, but that cannot be demonstrated because the case was not seen through to its end.
	The second paragraph of the action plan talks of strengthening
	the UK's implementation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
	According to the relevant document, enterprises should
	Enhance the transparency of their
	companies'
	activities in the fight against bribery and extortion.
	What better way to demonstrate transparency than by seeing such investigations through to their logical conclusion? We would all hope that, in the case of BAE Systems, its innocence would be demonstrated.
	The OECD document goes on to explain why this is so important. It says
	Bribery and corruption are not only damaging to democratic institutes and the governance of corporations, but they also impede efforts to reduce poverty. In particular, the diversion of funds through corrupt practices undermines attempts by citizens to achieve higher levels of economic, social and environmental welfare. Enterprises have an important role to play in combating these practices.
	If the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) is looking for an economic argument for continuing investigations of this kind, that is it.

Mike O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman is making some interesting points, and they are points that we had to consider in relation to the decision made by the director of the SFO and the view taken of that by the Law Officers. We had to consider the impactthat there might be on our international reputation and the burden we faced in terms of seeking to pursue allegationswhich is what they wereof corruption, as against what was on the other side of the scales, which was the legal requirement to consider the public interest and the national security of this country. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the issues he mentions were considered, but he is setting out only one side of the case in regard to them, whereas the problem was that there were other issues on the other side of the scales.

Simon Hughes: The decision to call this debate has proved worth while. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) rightly confirmed that the subjects it addresses are worth debating. I will seek to deal with comments made by colleagues in the course of the debate and with other matters that my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) was criticised for not dealing with, but which he did not deal with because we have adopted a double-handed approach with one Member opening and another winding up so we shared out the work between us.
	I want to try to establish the reason why we say that the matter under discussion is of important public interest for various reasons. As has been agreed, the matter dates back to a contract first entered into in the mid 1980s. It was a significant contract that turned out to be worth a significant amount of money. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham made the case that whether it is in the long-term interests of this country that that deal between BAE Systems and the Saudi authorities was entered into, and then continued as it has been since, was controversial at the time and, like the decisions taken recently, can only be viewed in the round. Of course a contract for jobs in this countryin an industry in which we have expertise involving a large employer with a good reputation is potentially beneficialof course a contract with an ally, whatever its failings, is potentially beneficial. However, from the beginning there was independent evidencethe Bank of England is as good a witness to call as anythat this was not an unqualified bonus: that it was not thought to be an unarguably beneficial contract. At the end of this exercise, only time will tell and only full information being revealed will show us whether the national interest has, on balance, been served by the contract, which began back in the 1980s.
	Nobody on the Liberal Democrat Benches has ever argued thatwhere we can do so legitimately and properly, at home or abroadwe should not seek work and contracts for British companies. It is not part of our case that we should not have a defence industry, and we have argued in support of strengthening our conventional defence, not weakening it. Nobody has argued that we should not have dealings with other countries. Our argument is about how matters have progressed, what the public know and whether, in the end, those involved have stayed on the right side of the law.
	It was not Liberal Democrats whoto use the Solicitor-General's phrasestarted a campaign of innuendo. Allegations surfaced back in the 1980s, which is why the National Audit Office, as the watchdog of public finance, held an inquiry on Parliament's behalf and brought its report to the Public Accounts Committee. Yes, it was a long time ago, and I accept that it is a decision for Parliament, not the Government, as to whether an NAO report is published. However, it is important to publish the report because, although it may or may not tell us something about the early history of these dealings, this is the only time in the NAO's history that such a report has not been published. The current Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee said in an intervention that he, having been briefed, believes that nothing suggested that there was corruption or that offences were committed by the Ministry of Defence. If so, that is all the more reason why the report should be released.
	Our motion calls for the report to be released, and if it is passed, that will be a clear indication that it should be released. I hope that the Conservatives will reflect on the fact that, if they vote against the motion, which we will certainly put to the vote, they will be voting against, among other things, the proposal that the NAO report, which remains secret, should come out into the open.
	The Serious Fraud Office, having been set up in 1988, started its investigations. There was a preliminary investigation in 2001, and questions and early-day motions were tabled in this House not only by Liberal Democrats, but by colleagues on the Government side who expressed concern about this issue. It was out in the open, and questions were regularly asked of Ministers. In the end, the SFO started a serious investigation, as it should. That is what it is there for, and what Parliament wanted it to do.
	Colleagues are of course right to say that until 2001, when we passed new legislation on this issue, it was much more difficult to deal with bribery and corruptionto deal with the paying of money outside a contract to achieve a benefit that one would not otherwise get without that wrongful payment, which is a simple principle to understand. So the 2001 legislation that the Labour Government introduced was welcome, and a new regimea new backclothbecame part of the landscape from then on.
	I share the view of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield that it is a great frustration to many that it is, however, now nine years since a new bribery Bill was contemplated. I am not blaming the Government entirely for that. I know what happenedsuch a Bill came up for scrutiny, and the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee rejected the idea of proceeding with it. There has since been a Home Office consultation paper, but our approach to this issue will not appear serious to this country, let alone to the rest of the world, until the other part of the legislative packageserious anti-bribery legislationis in place. I call on the Government and the Minister for the Middle East to indicate that they will turn the planned anti-bribery Bill into a reality, so that we can have a new anti-bribery Act.

Simon Hughes: I shall come to the issue of national security, because in the end it clearly determined the decision. However, I first wish to take the series of events to its conclusion. The statements were made in both Houses on a Thursday evening. The following day the Prime Minister was asked about the decision to discontinue the prosecution. Any normal reading of what he said makes it clear that it was his call that the proceedings were discontinued.
	Since those few days in December, what troubles many people is that the argument for the discontinuation of the prosecution appears to have shifted, depending on who was explaining the reasons. For example, the Attorney-General has said both privately and publicly that there were two factors in his mind and that of the director of the Serious Fraud Office. The same two factors are involved in the decision on any prosecution. The first is whether it has a better than 50 per cent. chance of success and the second is whether it is in the public interest. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) alluded to different types of prosecution, but the same two considerations apply equally every day, whether on decisions to prosecute old ladies who take things from supermarkets or on huge international contracts.
	One of the reasons given on 14 and 15 December, which later appeared to be less secure, was that the director of the Serious Fraud Office thought that there was no more mileage in the prosecution. However, we know that he thought that further investigation might have led somewhere because he confirmed it a day or two later, and he had a difference of view with the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General took a different view and said so. His view was that it was unlikely that even further months of investigation would lead to a successful conclusion.
	The security and intelligence services were also prayed in aid. It is still not clear what they said to Ministers, to the ambassador, to the director or to Law Officers. When the Attorney-General was questioned about that in the other place, in the debate initiated by Baroness Williams last weekit was a positive and engaged debate in which many of my colleagues took parthe said:
	I need to deal with one or two matters specifically. First, the position of SIS, the secret intelligence agency was raised ... SIS has made it clear publicly that it shared the concerns of others in government over the possible consequences for the public interest of the SFO investigation.[ Official Report, House of Lords,1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 379.]
	I will not read the whole paragraph into the record, but hon. Members can check that I am not misrepresenting by omission. However, the Attorney-General went on to say:
	As I said on 18 January, before the SFO decision was taken, I discussed the matter directly with the chief of SIS. The SIS has authorised me to say that it is clear about the importance of the Saudi counterterrorist effort to the UK.
	No one can argue with that: of course a relationship with an ally to deal with terrorism is valuable. The Attorney-General went on to say that the view of the SIS was
	that it would not be possible to replicate the level of counter-terrorism effort that had been achieved with the Saudis on UK/Saudi aspects of the problem if it were necessary to work at one remove, via the USA, for example. Official Report, House of Lords, 1 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 379.]
	We accept that too. But it is at least likely that the intelligence sharing exercise by the UK Government and their agencies and the Saudi Government and their agencies is as valuable to Saudi Arabia as it is to us. Given that al-Qaeda's prime objective is to destroy the house of Saud, which it believes has betrayed and corrupted the Islamic tradition, Saudi Arabia has a clear interest in making sure that it gets the intelligence that the UK, as a huge and effective centre for intelligence, acquires.
	There is no dispute about what the Attorney-General quotes the director of the SIS as saying. What has never been clear is that the director of the SIS gave a warning that caused the decision not to pursue the investigation to be taken.

Kim Howells: No, I do not have time; the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey went on for 27 minutes.
	I am absolutely sure that hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey took the right attitude in requesting the publication of that report, and in giving the reasons that he gave. The hon. Member for Twickenham, however, was a different matter. He made a real blooper when he said that, according to the OECD, Britain was the least compliant country with the convention, apart from Italy. No OECD statement to that effect has ever been made, and it is certainly not the case.
	If we are talking about comparisons between the levels of bribery across major exporting countries, we need look no further than Transparency International's most recent Bribe Payers Index, from autumn 2006, which states that UK-based companies are the least likely in the G7 countries to pay bribes in international business transactions. Next month, the United Kingdom will submit to the OECD an update of progress made on the overall implementation of the OECD convention. After discussions in Paris on 12 to 14 March, we plan to present a report on the subject to the House, so that Members can debate the matter for themselves.
	None of that will count for the hon. Member for Twickenham and his friends, however. They have rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story, and they do not intend to start now. I can just picture how the froth of innuendo, rumour and scandal that we heard at the start of the debate was concocted. No one enjoysa good conspiracy theory better than a Liberal Democrat politician. That froth is the Liberal Democrats' favourite drink, and it is usually drunk through a straw and put to one side of the mouth while they swap fantasies and gossip with journalists who hang around the Security Service like ageing groupies around an adored pop star. That is the company that the Liberal Democrats hang out with, and we ought to remember it; that is who they deal with, and they never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
	Of course, that froth quickly turns to mud, and some Liberal Democrats are rather fond of throwing it around. They do not care who it lands on, or whose reputation is stained, as long as they believe that they are getting votes from it. They do not care if it besmirches the country's reputation, either. That is why the hon. Member for Twickenham told us that piece of nonsense about the OECD report; he does not care. The Liberal Democrats do not care a bit if Britain is dragged into the mud by slurs. As long as they can bask among the mad ranks of their fellow conspiracy theorists, they will enjoy the slurs for as long as they last.
	To compare this country's record unfavourably with those of some of our European neighbours, whose records are frankly appalling, is mad, bad, and another case of the self-flagellation so beloved by the liberal press and their spokesmen in this country. I spend a great deal of my time meeting the Governments of other countries, and I know of no other country, and no other major economy, that enjoys the United Kingdom's reputation for honesty and openness. The Liberal Democrats ought to remember that, instead of trying to drag the country through the mud whenever they open their mouths.
	I cannot remember which Liberal Democrat Member asked a question on the subject, but I want to reinforce the point that it was the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, which was implemented in 2002, that clarified the law and made it absolutely clear that the bribery of a foreign official was an offence. That is the UK's position, particularly with regard to the OECD. It could be dangerous if the Government appeared to agree that no prosecution could be brought prior to the introduction of the 2001 Act. That is a reasonable subject for debate, but the Government's record should not be dragged down by the kind of innuendo and absolute nonsense that we heard earlier.
	Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom have had a long relationship, and I remind hon. Members that at the heart of that relationship is our strong partnership on global counter-terrorism efforts. We enjoy a highly productive intelligence relationship with good operational results, and that should not be pooh-poohed. We work closely with a number of Saudi security organisations, and we believe that both sides gain from that co-operation. As my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General repeated today, had the Serious Fraud Office investigation continued, there would have been a real danger that Saudi Arabia would have withdrawn its co-operation in that field, depriving the United Kingdom of a key partner and putting the lives of UK citizens at risk. It was on the basis of that risk that the director of the Serious Fraud Office concluded that the investigation should be halted.
	Let me try to address claims that the SFO's decision proves that the Government are soft on corruption. As my hon. and learned Friend said at the start of the debate, the Government are strongly committed to tackling corruption, and we are doing much, much more on a range of aspects of fighting corruption. As he reminded us, the Government pioneered the extractive industries transparency initiative, which supports improved governance in resource-rich countries through the full publication and validation of company payments and Government revenues from oil, gas and mining. The remarkable progress made by the EITI in the past four years is widely acknowledged. That in itself could transform the lives of many people living in Africa and other continents. We have their lives in mind as we try to make sure that we tackle corruption everywhere, and that effort should not be besmirched by the kind of innuendo that we have heard today.

Nicholas Clegg: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the increasing evidence of a crisis in the criminal justice system, with excessive levels of prison overcrowding, failure to tackle rising reoffending rates, unacceptable breach rates of the Government's anti-social behaviour measures, widespread public fear of crime and the judiciary's concern over Government sentencing policy; believes that a new direction in Government policy prioritising administrative competence over media-driven legislative initiatives is urgently required; calls on the Government to make prison work by tripling the numbers of prisoners doing paid work and making education and training compulsory, with contributions from earnings going towards a victim compensation fund; calls for measures to allow sentences to mean what they say; further calls for the abandonment of the expensive identity cards scheme to allow funding for a sustainable increase in police numbers; urges the Government to divert money allocated to the latest prison building programme towards the expansion of secure and semi-secure mental health treatment facilities; and further calls on the Government to increase the use of restorative community justice panels to help reduce repeat crime, increase the use of rigorous and visible non-custodial sentences as a viable alternative to short-term prison sentences and change licensing provision to give local communities greater say over the closure of pubs and clubs which contribute to alcohol-fuelled violence.
	This debate is extremely timely. For 10 years the Government have presented us with an endless menu of tough rhetoric on crime and law and order and a barrage of frenzied new law-making, and now we are entitled to ask questions. By coincidence, it is10 months almost to the day since the first revelation in a series of scandals that have rocked the Home Office. Members will recall that in April last year it was first revealed that more than 1,000 foreign offenders who had been recommended for deportation by British courts were not being deported. So it is a good time to ask what has happened in the last 10 years. What is the result of all the tough talk? Has all the legislation really made a difference? What has gone so spectacularly wrong, and why?
	If we look objectively at almost any aspect of the criminal justice systemevery body, every institutionit is impossible to claim other than that almost every pillar of the system is in a state of perhaps irremediable crisis.  [Laughter.] Labour Members laugh, but it is no laughing matter. We have a prison system that is bursting at the seams, with offenders moved at dead of night from one overcrowded prison cell to another and an epidemic of violenceprisoner on prisoner, prisoner on officerwhich has risen by 500 per cent. in the last 10 years. Meanwhile, we have no space, resources or time for the rehabilitation that is necessary to deal with reoffending rates that have also gone through the roof. It is no laughing matter that our prisons are at breaking point.

Nicholas Clegg: No, I would like to make some progress, as time is limited.
	In contrast to non-violent crime, violent crime has doubled since 1998. Violent offenders are now more likely to get a caution than a conviction in court. Fewer than one in a hundred crimes is being punished in court. Antisocial behaviour ordersthe great catch-all magic wand solution to everything, and the one-trick pony of the Prime Minister in dealing with antisocial behaviourare now being breached more than 50 per cent. of the time. The Home Office, according to the Home Secretary himselfthere is no greater authorityis not fit for purpose. The report from the EU, which I referred to earlier, has confirmed that we are now the sick man of Europe in terms of crime. We are the most burgled country in Europe.

Nicholas Clegg: I can only go by the discussions that I have had myself with the police in Liverpool. The hon. Lady will know about the Matrix team which works to combat serious and organised gun crime in the area. The leader of Liverpool council and I spent the day with that team recently, and its members were full of praise for the support that they had received from Liberal Democrats on Liverpool city council. Liverpool Liberal Democrats have done pioneering work in introducing alley gates, which have cut domestic burglary rates in Liverpool by an unprecedented amount.

Nicholas Clegg: I am grateful to my hon. Friend because I can think of no better example of the gap between rhetoric and bluster, and what the public actually wantcompetence and effectiveness. The public donot want the endless headline-grabbing legislative gimmicks: they just want Government to work.

Nicholas Clegg: In that case, I shall get back to the hon. Gentleman when I have researched the matter a little more.
	The Government should stop blaming others. The new Home Secretary had barely walked through the doors of the Home Office when he started blaming his predecessors. He then blamed civil servants, the Opposition and the judgeswhen they said things that were not to his likingand, most recently in an interview onRadio 4, he blamed the redecoration problems of some fictional house in the Home Office. Peeling away the wallpaper apparently reveals one problem after another, as if the Home Secretary is Bob the Builder. People want the Home Secretary to get to grips with issues, not continually shuffle blame on to others.
	It is high time that the Prime Minister and the latest Home Secretary showed some contrition and apologised to the British people for promising so much and delivering chaos, and for talking tough and creating systematic incompetence.
	My second suggestion is that the Government should have the courage to do the hard work to change the behaviour of offenders. They should not simply perpetuate the carousel or revolving door of repeat crime. That means thinking radically about what is happening in our overcrowded, over-burdened, dysfunctional prison system. The Government need to admit that it is not possible to build their way out of the prison overcrowding crisis. The 8,000 new prison places that will be built at an expense to the taxpayer of 1.5 billion will not come on stream until 2011-12, by which time every objective observer accepts that prison numbers will have increased far in excess of those extra places.

Nicholas Clegg: I want to make one more point, and then I shall give way to the hon. Lady.
	As I said earlier, 92 per cent. of young men who go to prison to serve a sentence of three months or less reoffend within two years of release. We have no rational or moral reason to accept that, because the result is that there is more crime and more victims. Could we not think more creatively about ways to hand out community sentences that are more visible and demanding? We suggest that they should be no less than twice the length of time of short custodial sentences. The evidence shows that such sentences provide a better way to cut crime, and that they do not create it.

Tony McNulty: I wholly concur with Mr. Speaker and admonish my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac). What a disgraceful thing to say! Of course, I welcome the three Conservative Front Benchers, who make up in quality for what is absent in quantity behind them.
	We need to look at the context for the debate. The Government have much to be proud ofcertainly not to apologise forin our record of tackling crime. The 2005-06 British crime survey shows that, compared with 1997, all crime is down by 35 per cent: burglary is down by 55 per cent., all vehicle related thefts are down by 51 per cent. and violence, measured by the BCS, is down by 34 per cent. In stark terms, those figures mean that there are 5.8 million fewer offences overall than in 1997, as estimated by the BCS, and that the risk of householders experiencing crime is at an historically low level24 per cent., down from 35 per cent. in 1997.
	Whatever the policy differences between us, it is indisputable that the 10,000 antisocial behaviour ordersthey have not been raining down like confetti, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam suggestedthe 13,000 acceptable behaviour contracts and the 1,000 or more dispersal orders have made a significant difference in communities up and down the country, and should not have been treated in a disparaging way that he will probably live to regret.

Gerald Kaufman: Since my hon. Friend has been talking about antisocial behaviour orders, is he aware that, in addition to the Liberal Democrats' repeatedly voting against every antisocial behaviour Bill that has come before the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrats on Manchester city council said that there was too much antisocial behaviour legislation and the Liberal Democrats inmy constituency were against the appointment of neighbourhood wardens but then asked for more neighbourhood wardens?

Tony McNulty: What I would say to those people, if I may step out and be partisan momentarily, is that whatever else they do, they should never vote for a Liberal Democrat. It will not be possible to use antisocial behaviour orders, because the Liberal Democrats are against them, as they have shown in practical terms in councils up and down the country. Seeking a dispersal order to get rid of those individuals will not happen because the Liberal Democrats are against them, so those people causing trouble in my hon. Friend's constituency are going to remain for ever in that estate.
	The Government have made substantial additional investment in education for offendersfrom 52 million in 2001-02 to 156 million in 2006-07. There is clear evidence that it is working. In the forewordsadly, it is spelled F, O, R, W, A, R, D in my brief, so I will see someone and have words with them laterto its annual report of 2005-06, the chief inspector of the adult learning inspectorate said:
	Perhaps the most heartening success I can report this year has been achieved in prison learning and skills... only 16 per cent.
	still too many
	had inadequate learning and skills provision.
	A commitment to make learning and skills compulsory would come close to trebling those costs in terms of delivery alone and substantial investment would be needed to increase the availability of classrooms, workshops and IT.
	Again, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam made a fair pointbut then lost it in all the focus drivelabout people with mental health problems and about levels of functional literacy in prisons. Some problems need dealing with, but it is absolutely and profoundly wrong to suggest that nothing is being done, though it may well be the case that more should be done.

Tony McNulty: I am not, but I would have absolutely no difficulty with being on the database. I tell the hon. Gentleman sincerely that he should consider the victims of Anthony De Boise, the victims of another individual who is now doing six years for sexual assault, to whom the same thing applieshis DNA was picked up in one environment, but the charges were dropped, and he was subsequently charged for other offencesand the victims of Shaun Greenway, who is serving a life sentence for three rapes committed between 2002 and 2005. The Prime Minister has said clearly, in terms, that he is quite comfortable withthe notion of everybody being on the database.  [Interruption.] I will ignore the chuntering, if I may.
	We are told that, under the Liberal Democrat freedom Bill, the use of hearsay evidence in court would be scrapped. It should not be used all the time, in all circumstances; however, in particular circumstances, and for particular crimes, when the proper safeguards are in place, it can make the difference between convicting someone who is guilty, after due process, and not convicting them. The proposal would sound lovely in a little Liberal Democrat freedom Bill, but it would be profoundly destructive to what we are trying to do for our communities under the criminal justice system.

Nick Herbert: I agree with much that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) said. I welcome his conversion to the principle of honesty in sentencing. We have said that judges should specify a minimum and a maximum number of years for an offender to serve in prison, with a minimum sentence being served in full. We have said that the early release scheme should be scrapped. We made those pledges at the last election.
	It would be churlish of me not to welcome the hon. Gentleman's belated recognition that we were right, but we have some important differences with the Liberal Democrats. They support community sentences instead of prison for many crimes, but I cannot agree that prison sentences are not appropriate for serial shoplifters, vandals or fine defaulters. Custodial sentences are sometimes the only option for courts when offenders are serially abusing the criminal justice system. Some call these offenders petty, but their actions can make people's lives a misery and blight communities.
	The failure or improper use of many non-custodial penalties has gravely undermined the public's confidence in ill thought-through alternatives to prison. Over 4,000 prisoners released early under the home detention curfew scheme have reoffended, committing more than 7,000 crimes. More than 1,000 of those were violent offences, including a murder, woundings and assaults. The hon. Gentleman says that there should be no soft options. I agree, so I have been reading the Liberal Democrats' We Can Cut Crime website with great interest. I am surprised that so much Liberal Democrat policy has been left outthe generous pledge to give prisoners the right to vote, their plan to downgrade the classification of ecstasy, and their long-standing commitment to the legalisation of prostitution. The party's new campaign appears to be the latest incarnation of what was briefly called tough liberalism, a notion best epitomised by the proposal to send teenage joyriders to race cars or learn car maintenance. In the words of the party's former home affairs spokesman:
	maybe, just maybe they will get out of committing crime.
	Alternatively, maybe they will learn to fix the cars that they steal and drive them faster.
	It would be a shame if the full complement of Liberal Democrat policies were not promoted more effectively. We cannot rely on wecancutcrime.com, so I have done some research, and I can tell the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam that woollyliberals.com is still availablewoollyliberals.eu is also available, if he prefers it.
	Yesterday, the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee:
	I think that we have got to be careful as law makers that we are not literally living on a different planet from the public.
	It is safe to say that the Prime Minister is not literally living on a different planet from the rest of us, even if many in his own party would like that to be the case. When it comes to the Government's claims on tackling crime, however, the Government appear to be living in a parallel universe. The Government amendment
	welcomes the significant and lasting reduction in crime.
	Reduction? Only on a measure that excludes crimes against under-16s and commercial property, drug dealing and murder. If one adds in the crimes that have been left out, there are not 10 million crimes a yearthe figure is more like 30 million.
	In November, a leaked document from the Prime Minister's own strategy unit admitted that 80 per cent. of the claimed decrease in crime was due to economic factors. As the centre for crime and justice studies at King's college London has pointed out, the Government easily achieved their crime targets, because those targets were
	set on the basis of existing trends continuing regardless of government action.
	The fact is that almost 500,000 more crimes were committed last year than in the year in which the Government entered office. Far from the lasting reduction claimed in the amendment, the strategy unit document tells us that the Home Office prediction is that crime will begin to risein fact, crime rose in last week's figures. Not surprisingly, that page in the strategy unit's document did not appear in the final versionanother dodgy dossier, and another inconvenient truth hidden from the public.
	Frankly, no one believes the Government's claims on crime any more, because, as the Statistics Commission has said, the Government routinely spin the figures. The Government claim that the chances of being a victim of crime are at historically low levels, but people in this country have a higher chance of being a victim than people in any of our peer group countries, bar one. Home Office spending has risen by 6.2 billion a year under this Government, an increase of nearly 290 per household. We now spend more on law and order as a proportion of GDP2.5 per cent.than any other OECD country. Yet only this week, the European crime and safety survey showed that the UK has the highest rate of burglary and assault in the European Union. We have the highest spending and the worst performance. Have the Government not stopped for one second to ask themselves why that is the case?
	The second claim from planet Marsham street is that new and innovative powers to tackle antisocial behaviour are working. How exactly are they working, when more than half of ASBOs are breached? The Youth Justice Board has said that young people treat ASBOs as a badge of honour. The Government say that ASBOs are working. It is not hard to decide who to believe. How do the Government know that ASBOs are working, when the National Audit Office has said that there has been no formal assessment of the programme? There is no serious programme to deal with antisocial behaviour; all we get is a series of gimmicks. We have had Respect handbooks and Respect rocks parties on beaches, and we have had together plans and action plans, yet antisocial behaviour still plagues our communitiesin particular, it affects the poorest communities in the country.
	What action has there been? There has been action to keep offenders out of court. Thousands of offenders, including sex offenders, are now receiving cautions for their crimes. Serial shoplifters are being rewarded with penalty notices, which can be less than the value of the stolen goods. Those actions all count as offences brought to justice, but half the fines are not paid, so the offences are not brought to justice at all. The only effect has been to hit a Government target.
	The Government's amendment claims that the introduction of identity cards will combat immigration abuse and illegal working. How will ID cards prevent illegal immigration when foreign visitors, of whom there were 28 million last year, will not be required to have one unless they plan to stay in the UK for more than three months? I notice that in the midst of the constantly shifting justifications for ID cards, the amendment does not claim that they will prevent terrorism. As the previous Home Secretary admitted, they did not prevent the bombings in Madrid and would not have prevented the 7/7 bombings either. If the Government were serious about dealing with immigration, they would reintroduce proper border controls, but the UK Borders Bill no more does that than it deals with the 10,000 foreign nationals in our prisons, more than half of whom still will not face automatic deportation under its measures.
	The Government congratulate themselves on the provision of extra prison places, but there is nothing to congratulate them on as regards prisons. As Professor Rod Morgan, the former chairman of the Youth Justice Board who resigned, warned last week, we are standing on the brink of a prisons crisis. Prisons are full. Unsuitable police cells are being used to house inmates. Unsuitable offenders have been transferred to open jails, and prisoners, including murderers, have been walking out of the doors at a rate of two a week from Ford prison in my constituency. Drugs are rife in prisonsinstitutions that are meant to be secure. Reconviction rates are rising. Nearly 80 per cent. of young male prisoners reoffend within two years. I agree with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam that we have to do more to ensure that prisons work effectively and to provide alternative secure places for prisoners with serious drugs problems. Seventy per cent. of adult prisoners have a reading and numeracy age of under 11. The amount of purposeful activity in prisons is appalling, be it work, education or training. We cannot possibly hope to rehabilitate prisoners in the current crowded conditions.
	The Government proclaim that record numbers of police officers and police community support officers are on the streets helping to make communities safer. Where are all those officers? They are spending less than a fifth of their time on the beat. They are in stations filling in multiple forms to process arrests. They are in court spending hours waiting for cases that are cancelled when witnesses do not turn up. Some 8,000 of them are on restricted dutieson full pay but doing as little as an hour's work a day, at a cost of243 million a year. Police stations have been closed. The Government have reneged on their manifesto promise to deliver 24,000 PCSOs by next year. They have shelved their manifesto promise to introduce the national non-emergency 101 number. The police national database that was promised in the wake of the Soham murders has been delayed by three years, and costs have more than doubled. Perhaps by Home Office standards that counts as a reasonable performance.
	In November, the Government said that they were going to publish a vision for policing. Like the 101 number and the promised PCSOs, the vision has been shelved. After the collapse of the mergers, the Government have nothing to say about policing. Ministers are giving no direction at all but merely call lamely for a debate. The Government's sole remaining vision of policing is the prospect of Scotland Yard officers marching up Downing street. Where are the big ideas? What happened to the tough action on the causes of crime? Like the Minister's advice to members of the public who see a mugging, all the Government can do is put up their hands.
	But let us be fair to the Home Secretary. He has one big ideato split his Department in two. Of course we agree that there is a major security challenge facing the country, and that the Home Office ministerial team needs strengthening to confront that challengefrankly, it would be hard to disagree with that. Splitting the Home Office would be disruptive and would dislocate the criminal justice system by separating the police from the penal system at a time when justice so clearly needs to be joined up. However, it would not solve the real problem, which has been successive Home Secretaries under this Government and the strategic errors that they have made. Ministers took the decision to relax immigration controls, and the decision was wrong. Ministers were warned four years ago that the minimum level of the prison population would be higher than it is now, but they ignored the advice, took the decision, and the decision was wrong. Officials are not to blame, and it is not the Department that is unfit for purpose, but Ministers. Why should splitting a Department result in Ministers who can make better decisions? What we need is a Home Secretary who prefers responsible, long-term decisions to grabbing the next headline, but we have not had that for 10 years. Instead, the criminal justice system has been deluged with legislation. Sixty-two Home Office Bills have been introduced since 1997six in this Session alone. Twenty-three measures have subsequently been wholly or partly repealed. Out of 3,000 new offences, 430 have been created by the Home Office.
	There has been equally frenetic spinning. The Government Communication Network is currently advertising a vacancy for a news editor for the Home Office website. The job specification is candid. It states:
	This is a challenging role... The successful candidate will be joining a professional... team
	that will be news to the Home Secretary
	and taking the lead in writing news stories... You will need to be someone who is highly adaptable, excels when working under pressure and can juggle a varied and demanding workload with good cheer.
	I wish the news editor well on planet Marsham street. Back in the real world, people have had their fill of spin.
	After 10 years and billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, there is no one else for the Government to blame. The failure to tackle crime is their record. Failures in the Home Office are their responsibility. The 27,500 files on criminals that sat for years on a Home Office desk are their responsibility. The failure to jail sex offenders because the prisons are full is their fault. They promised the public tough action, they failed to deliver and they will be held to account.

Jeremy Browne: I am pleased to be called to sum up a debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg), who opened it, called very opportune. We are approaching a decade of this Labour Government, and the Blair era will soon be written about in the history books. There will be plenty of material to considerthe absence of real leadership and of meaningful reform in welfare and health care, and the huge scar running through the Government that is the war in Iraq.
	However, the Prime Minister is especially associated with one phrase. It made him famous as a politician, even though it was apparently authored by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The phrase is
	Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
	Laudable though the thought is, the phrase neatly sums up where the Prime Minister, and the Government as a whole, have gone wrong. He has put his faith in a slogan emphasising toughness, when what was needed was action with an emphasis on effectiveness. The Government's attachment to spin, media management and presentation at the expense of serious and effective measures to reduce crimeand especially serious categories such as gun crimehas been a lamentable feature of their time in office.
	An indication of the Prime Minister's style was apparent when an email memorandum was published in 2000. It was from TB, and was dated 29 April. It summed up his approach to the way in which the Government were to go about the serious problem of rising crime in this country. The Prime Minister said:
	On crime, we need to highlight the tough measures ... we are lacking a tough public message ... We should think now of an initiative, eg locking up street muggers. Something tough, with immediate bite which sends a message through the system.
	Maybe, the driving licence penalty for young offenders. But this should be done soon and I, personally, should be associated with it.
	That email sums up the Prime Minister's entire approach to crimegimmicky, ill thought out, and associated with him. The preoccupation was with getting in tomorrow's newspapers, and not with addressing the serious problems afflicting the country.
	A more recent example appeared in the  Evening Standard of 17 January. A senior official who had worked directly with the Prime Minister said:
	The trouble with Tony is that he thinks that just because he says he wants something to happen it is going to happen.
	One could not sum up better the sentiments of those Labour Back Benchers who have contributed to the debate. Because the Prime Minister thinks that something is a good idea, they think that it is happening and making a measurable difference to our communities.

Jeremy Browne: All kinds of measures have been taken by local councils all over the country. I may be as disingenuous as the hon. Gentleman was trying to be when I suggest that the correlation between crime rates and areas represented by Labour Members may be unflattering but that does not mean that every person in his party is directly responsible for the situation.
	The outcome is bleak indeed. Violent crime, which concerns people most, has doubled since 1998. Our prisons are overflowing. Only this week, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam pointed out that violent offences in prisons have increased by600 per cent., including attacks on brave prison officers. Sixty per cent. of prisoners reoffend within two years. The figure rises for young men on short sentences, 92 per cent. of whom reoffend within two years of release. Furthermore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has just noted, the Government have even broken their promises about the numbers of police community support officers.
	Earlier in the debate, we heard a list of wholly misleading and unrepresentative claims about the Liberal Democrats. It is not for me to suggest that anybody in the House was deliberately being misleading, but I shall briefly go through the claims. It was said by a Labour Back Bencher that my party voted against ASBOs. Not true. I refer Members to a Library note of 18 January 2007, which states that the Crime and Disorder Act 1998
	had cross party support, and there was no division on second reading or third reading in the Commons, and no divisions on ASBOs in the Commons committee stages...while the Liberal Democrats moved amendments on such points, their spokesmen made it clear that they did not oppose the principle of ASBOs.
	Many Members on the Labour Benches owe the House an apology, which they may want to make through the proper channels.
	It was said that my party favours votes for prisoners, but that was not in our manifesto and the leader of my party has made it explicit that he does not favour themjust as, I believe, the Minister is on the point of introducing them. It was said in interventions during the debate that my party voted against measures to close crack houses. Let me make it clear that we have always supported proposals to make it possible for crack houses to be closed, but, in this case, they were contained in a bigger Bill with a whole series of other measures. We voted against the Bill because there were other features of it that we objected to. Most particularly, we objected to the total inability of Labour Members to appreciate that freedom of association is an important right to preserve in an open, free and liberal country. Perhaps even worse than all those untruths was the claim that my party is against community support officers. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are the party that has championed community level activities to reduce crime. It is the big, top-down schemes that have been brought forward by the Government that have been most ineffective.
	There is a better way. We could have more police on patrol in our communities working with our communitiesrather than having 100,000 spent every single day on getting ready for identity cards, which will curtail the liberties of our fellow citizens. We could make work and training compulsory in prison so that we cut the appalling reoffending rates. That would mean that those young people92 per cent. of young men are reconvicted within two yearswould be equipped with greater skills to read, write, get a job and make themselves respectable members of society, rather than going through a revolving door into the community and committing crimes against the constituents of all Members. We could have honest prison sentencesrather than the spin that we hear from the Governmentwhere life really means life.
	We could have new measures to tackle the problem of drink-fuelled violence, which has exploded under the Government. The idea that in 1997 the problem was worse in our town centres that it is today is a myth. Perhaps no Labour Members ever go out in town centres. The idea that drink-fuelled crime and antisocial behaviour is being sorted out by the Government is beyond contempt. We could have better compensation for victimsthe people who are so often forgotten in this processand real work in prisons so that prisoners are able to reacquaint themselves with some of the challenges that they will face on the outside and so that they can pay their dues to both the victims of crime and society as a whole.
	We have had an interesting debate, but, more than anything else, it has revealed how thin and tired the Government's legislative programme is. I am afraid that the public have seen through the spin and the eye-catching initiatives that are designed to win headlines in tomorrow's papers, but do not seem to bear any resemblance to the effectiveness of tackling crime in the communities that we represent. They have seen through the endless legislation that is designed to score party political points in the House, but that does little, if anything, to tackle the problem of crime and antisocial behaviour. Labour Members think that the public do not understand that their day-to-day experiences are all too familiar. So many people see vandalism, graffiti, theft and other crime. They see that violent crime has doubled. Knife crime is up. Gun crime is up. The situation is serious, but Labour Members are living in a mythical world where everything is going all right, everybody in prison is being rehabilitated, crime is being sorted out and serious crime is being sorted out. When they go back to their constituencies, they can see with their own eyes that that is not the case. The public are sick of tough talk from Labour Ministers on crime. What they want is effective action to reduce crime, and that is what the Liberal Democrats are offering.

Vernon Coaker: I think the usual words are that we have had an interesting debate this evening. I want to put on the recordI think it important to do sosome of the Government's successes in tackling crimes. I will quote the sources so that Liberal Democrat Members, as well as my hon. Friends and other Members, can be clear about them. That should help to deal with some of the claims made in the Liberal Democrat Focus leaflets on crime, as my hon. Friends will hopefully be able to use  Hansard to attack them.
	It remains clear that much of what the Government have done on crime has been a success. Crimes that affect most people are down by 35 per cent., representing 5.8 million fewer offences; and the chances of being a victim of crime fell from 35 per cent. to24 per cent., while fear of crime remains at historically low levels. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety said earlier, burglary is down by 59 per cent., vehicle theft by 60 per cent. and household offences are down by 45 per cent. All British crime survey violence offences are down 43 per cent. and all personal offences are down 41 per cent [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) wants me to continue, last year firearms offences were also down 14 per cent.
	May I also say that tools and powers to tackle antisocial behaviour are now being widely and wisely used with nearly 10,000 antisocial behaviour orders across the country? I do not know about my hon. Friends, but what I often encounter in community meetings up and down the country is not requests to abolish ASBOs because they are paraded as a badge of honour, but to hand out more of them. We are often told that approximately half of all ASBOs are breached, but it is important to remember that half of those responsible for those breaches end up with custodial sentences. If we spent rather more time saying that half of ASBOs are observed and that in respect of the half that are breached, half the people go to prison, we would see even more ASBOs used, as the public would view them as more effective. Alongside those ASBOs, more than 13,000 acceptable behaviour contracts have been used.

Jane Kennedy: On the subject of antisocial behaviour orders, the Minister may like know that the Merseyside police use them extremely effectively against second-level criminals, such as the organisers of the drug dealers. They are based on the same rules as apply to young offenders. Very effective and imaginative use is being made of a tool that the Labour Government have provided to the police and which the Liberal Democrats have opposed.

Vernon Coaker: I am not giving way to the hon. Gentleman; he was not in the Chamber for most of the debate.
	Another point that seems to have caught the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam by surprise was the fact that the Liberal Democrats want to allow 16-year-olds to buy alcohol. That seems to have come as a shock to him, yet in  Hansard on 25 January 2005, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) asked:
	Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it is Lib Dem policy to legalise drinking at the age of 16? Does he think that that will contribute to a reduction in binge drinking?
	The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) replied:
	The answer is yes. I do not think that I could explain the position more clearly.[ Official Report, 25 January 2005;Vol. 430, c. 185.]
	Liberal Democrats refuse to recognise that their policy on crime changes, depending on the issue, and it changes with the person who happens to be speaking, too. Frankly, the experience of hon. Friends and other hon. Members is that it also changes from one street to another.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House welcomes the significant and lasting reductions in crime this Government has achieved since 1997 which mean that the chances of being a victim of crime are at historically low levels, 24 per cent. according to the most recent British Crime Survey figures, compared with 35 per cent. in 1997; notes the new and innovative powers to tackle anti-social behaviour which are helping provide respite to communities across the country; welcomes the introduction of biometric identity cards to combat immigration abuse, illegal working, identity fraud and crime as well as strengthening national security and improving access to public services; notes the delivery of an extra 19,000 prison places and an increase in spending on prisons by 35 per cent. in real terms over the last10 years and a further increase over the next five years to deliver a further 8,000 places; welcomes the record numbers of police officers and police community support officers on the streets helping to make communities safer; and congratulatesthe Government on its commitment to driving down crime further.

Ordered,
	That Lynda Waltho be discharged from the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons and Sir Peter Soulsby be added. [Mr. Foster.]

Colin Breed: In many respects I wish I were not here to speak about the dangers of carbon monoxide gas, and perhaps in some respects I should not have to be here to speak about those dangers. The last occasion on which we debated the subject of carbon monoxide was in 1998, at about the time I joined CO-Gas Safety, a charity set up in 1995, dedicated to raising awareness of carbon monoxide poisoning and supporting the victims and families of gas-related accidents and deaths. Neither I nor the charity's dedicated president, Stephanie Trotter OBE, ever imagined that we would still be here, nearly 10 years later, banging the same drum to raise awareness of an entirely preventable killer. For that is what it comes down to: every death caused by carbon monoxide is one death too many. There has been a great deal of talk in the last 10 years about a co-ordinated approach to carbon monoxide, but we have yet to see any firm action or actual funding committed to it.
	Carbon monoxide is a deadly poisonous gas which cannot be heard, seen, tasted or smelt, and can be tested only with equipment such as a flue gas analyser. It can cause death within two minutes of high-level exposure, and low-level long-term exposure can cause brain or neurological damage resulting in some victims' being confined to a wheelchair for life. People with carbon monoxide poisoning are often told by their GPs that they have a virus, or perhaps are suffering from myalgic encephalomyelitis.
	The dangers of using unsafe gas appliances, and any unsafe appliance powered by a fuel that burns coal, oil, petrol or wood, have been highlighted in the media recently following a number of tragic casesparticularly that of the young brother and sister aged six and seven who died while on holiday in Corfu last October. The truth is that such deaths happen here, in our own constituencies up and down the country, but they are often under-reported. There is no automatic test of dead bodies in the United Kingdom like the test that happens in France, for instance. In 2003 a pathologist missed carbon monoxide in a previously healthy 11-year-old, until his parentswho had nearly died themselvesdemanded that they and he be tested for carbon monoxide poisoning.
	This debate is timely for another reason. Today,7 February 2007, sees the first meeting of an industry working group on carbon monoxide which CORGI, the national gas safety watchdog, is co-ordinating. I have to say that I fear it will be yet another meeting with more talk and bluster to compensate for, or cover up, the lack of action that we have seen for many years. Co-ordinated approaches have been discussed, committees have met and sat, and since 1997 we have seen all sorts of initiatives, but what is actually required is funding to establish a much-needed awareness campaign. Why do the Government not force the fuel industry to provide those funds? Centrica last year announced a profit of 1.5 billion.
	The Health and Safety Commission made two much needed recommendations in 2000, neither of which have been implemented. Why? The first recommendation was to impose a modest levy on gas suppliers to provide funds for publicity about the dangers of carbon monoxide, and the second was to ensure that the gas emergency service has, and uses, equipment to test appliances in respect of carbon monoxide emergencies. Those two recommendations seemed very positive, and yet now, seven years later, they have not been taken up.
	Let me put some matters into perspective. In terms of the levy, a mere 1 per household per year would generate about 22 million which could easily fund a television warning campaign about carbon monoxide poisoning. That could be the type of television campaign that has been successful on the different dangers of household fires, smoking, and drinking and driving. How many households today do not have, or know about, smoke detectors? They are everywhere. There are not many households that do not at least have access to at least one smoke detector. Yet most home owners are totally unaware of the existence of carbon monoxide detectors; the cost of an audible such alarm is a mere 20, and it could save countless lives.

Anne McGuire: Of course I will. We need to work together to ensure that all the bases are covered.
	When things go seriously wrong, the HSE normally takes enforcement action against the culprits. Gas safety cases make up about 6 per cent. of all prosecutions mounted by the HSE, which is a significant proportion given the wide range of industries covered by the HSE's remit. Landlords have been imprisoned for gas safety failures and substantial fines have been imposed in some cases. The message from this debate is that such offences will not be taken lightly; a landlord can end up in prison.
	The HSE is targeting and strengthening enforcement against installers who are not CORGI-registered. For example, a recent case in the south-west led to prosecutions, and the courts imposed fines and community orders. As such cases generate significant local and national publicity about gas safety issues, it reinforces their deterrent value.
	Much more needs to be done to raise public awareness of gas safety. Most recently, my ministerial colleagues, led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, have been taking steps to engage the gas industry in renewed efforts to raise awareness, building on the industry's opportunities for direct contact with consumers. I re-emphasise the fact that although the evidence shows that existing arrangements have helped to improve safety standards, the Government accept that much more can and should be done, and that fresh arrangements may be needed in the future. That is why we initiated the comprehensive review, to which the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall referred.
	As I said, the Government have recently engaged the gas industry in renewed efforts to raise awareness. As part of its review the HSE commissioned research on gas appliances in people's homes. The hon. Gentleman alluded to some of the horrendous stories revealed by such research. The HSE research showed that 45 per cent. of homes had received no information about the dangers of carbon monoxide.
	The Government believe that co-ordination is critical in initiatives to raise awareness. Individual companies have been active, as the hon. Gentleman indicated, but the industry has accepted the need for closer partnership working to ensure that messages are consistent and information is targeted effectively at those who need it most. The silent killer does not discriminate, but research shows that faulty appliances are more likely to be found in the homes of the most vulnerable consumers. Last year, only 45,000 of the 5 million eligible customersless than 1 per cent.took advantage of the gas suppliers' free annual gas safety check for householders who are of pensionable age, disabled or chronically sick. We need to make sure that people benefit from existing initiatives, as well as looking into how we can strengthen other aspects of awareness.
	Further measures will be taken following a decision by my noble Friend Lord McKenzie of Luton about the recommendations arising from the HSE reviewof gas safety. However, as I have indicated, the Government are already actively working with the gas industry to raise awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide. We shall continue to act on the basis of partnership to ensure that those best placed to make a difference can do so, and that the activities of different stakeholders reinforce each otherincluding the organisations with which the hon. Gentleman and other Members are involved.
	I am pleased that the gas industry has made a commitment to do more. It now needs to show that it will deliver on that important commitment. With that approach, I hope that a further reduction in CO2 poisoning incidents will be possible and that there will thus be a reduction in the associated suffering of victims and their families.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at six minutes to Eight o'clock.